


Family Stuff

by josephina_x



Series: Friendship Is... [3]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, pre-Clex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-03-10 19:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3300257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex is walking a high-wire between Clark and his parents, and his father.</p><p>...He’s not entirely sure how you can have three sides to be between on a high-wire, mind you, but then he’s not sure about how aliens can be real, either. Except for the fact that Clark apparently is one -- an alien, not a tight-rope -- beyond also being very, very real ...which in itself has always been surreal to Lex, so maybe he should have expected this sooner?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Family Stuff  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: pre-Clex  
> Rating: PG  
> Spoilers: general through 1x14 (Zero), with mild references up through late season 5  
> Word count: ???+  
> Summary: Lex is walking a high-wire between Clark and his parents, and his father.
> 
> ...He’s not entirely sure how you can have three sides to be between on a high-wire, mind you, but then he’s not sure about how aliens can be real, either. Except for the fact that Clark apparently is one -- an alien, not a tight-rope -- beyond also being very, very real ...which in itself has always been surreal to Lex, so maybe he should have expected this sooner?  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: Next in the "Friendship Is..." series after Spooky Stuff.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex blearily twitched awake at the sound of the bedroom door being slammed open. 

There was yelling and loud voices that slowly resolved themselves as the fog in his head churned under. Hm, that was unusual, Lex knew he was usually fully-awake a lot more quickly than this was taking him... 

“ **What are you doing here, Luthor?** ” a thunderous voice bellowed at him. 

"...Sleeping in my bed until I was rudely awakened?" Lex drawled out in a half-mumble, highly annoyed at having been woken out of a sound sleep. He was sprawled out lazily across the mattress, belly-down, head turned sideways, actually feeling pretty relaxed, even somewhat comfortable and warm. That was nice, if a little... odd. 

Then he realized how odd the entire situation actually was and blinked open his eyes. 

This didn't look like his room. And Jonathan Kent was standing in the doorway, turning purple, with the veins bulging out along the side of his head. That couldn't be good for the man. 

"Your--?!? _**THAT IS NOT YOUR BED!!!**_ " Jonathan yelled, even more loudly than before. 

Lex blinked at Mr. Kent, then levered himself up on his right elbow, manfully holding back a grimace as muscles suddenly proclaimed soreness at the unwelcome motion, and looked down at the bed. Hm, Jonathan was right -- it _wasn't_ his bed -- it wasn't wide enough in the least. He glanced around the room then down at the bed again, frowning, then finally realized where he was. 

"Oh, right," Lex said. He was in Clark's room. How silly of him not to have recognized it right away. He _was_ at an odd angle, though. 

He glanced up at Mr. Kent, whose mouth was hanging open, then working silently as no words came out. Then Jonathan slammed his mouth shut, clenched his jaw, squared his shoulders aggressively, took a step into the room, and started to open his mouth again to grind out something-or-another when Clark suddenly appeared in the doorway. 

_"Dad!!"_ Clark yelled, managing to sound both concerned and mortified. He grabbed Jonathan's arm, forcibly dragged him out of the room, and pulled the door closed with a marginally softer 'bang!' There was muffled yelling and a scuffling sound across carpet and down stairs that got softer and even more unintelligible over time, finally fading into the sort of background yelling that Lex had grown up with at home between his parents. 

_I can probably sleep through that,_ Lex realized. Clark would probably be able to keep Jonathan away for awhile. He looked down at the bed again, reveling in the warmth of the blankets and bedclothes, and collapsed face-first into the pillow with a soft thump. He sighed, trying to focus on slowing his breathing and easing the tension out of his muscles again, but feeling some of them resist in little, almost-painful spasms. 

Then he finally started to remember how he'd gotten here, and rolled over to stare up at the ceiling. 

Then he remembered Clark hadn't wanted to tell the elder Kents that Lex knew about the spaceship, yet. He really hoped that Clark had moved the spaceship back where it belonged before his parents had arrived. Or at least tossed a blanket over it -- he doubted either of Clark's parents would believe that he hadn't seen it if it was still out in the open with him upstairs. Clark had been up and dressed, so Lex thought it could be within the realm of possibility. 

Then he remembered Clark hadn't wanted to tell them that Lex knew about the alien, yet, either. 

Then he remembered that Clark was the alien.

Lex closed his eyes and pulled the blankets up over his head. 

~*~*~*~*~*~


	2. Chapter 2

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex woke up some time later with a full bladder, an empty stomach, and an aching head. He groaned as he sat up, coughed a few times weakly until he shuddered, covers sliding off of him, and -- nevermind! -- upgraded that to an aching _everything_. 

This wasn't much of an improvement from earlier, especially since his head still felt like a foggy morning in England, but at least the basics came to him far more quickly this time: Clark's bed, Clark's room, Clark's house. Clark's spaceship. Parents downstairs -- probably. 

Oh, right -- and _Clark's_ spaceship. 

Lex eyed the pillows again and wondered if attempting to sneak in and out of the bathroom so he could try falling asleep again after answering the call of nature would be considered hiding. 

Well, he wasn't proud. ...Ok, not _that_ proud, anyway. 

Lex sighed softly, then stifled a grimace as he slid his legs over the side of the bed, stood up... and immediately teetered sideways on his feet. He only barely managed to catch himself two-handed against Clark's dresser top and escape completely going down. He got his knees under him and shivered, got himself straightened out. Had anyone heard? He hoped not. It was embarrassing, stumbling around with all the grace of a newborn colt, and Clark would just worry. 

Lex managed to make it out the door and to the upstairs bathroom without incident. He closed the door, leaning against it for a moment, and mentally grumbled when he discovered that, yes, there was _still_ no lock on the doorknob just like the previous evening, before taking care of business. 

After washing and drying his hands, he braced them carefully on either side of the sink and leaned forward, carefully examining himself in the mirror. 

He sucked in a deep breath at the sight, which turned into a hard coughing jag, and he only stayed upright by the grace of god and his own arm strength. When he got his breathing back under control, he stole another glance. 

Oh god, he really did look horrid! 

He ran a shaking hand over his face. Pale, sickly pale, with flushed cheeks, he looked almost gaunt. He turned his head and ran fingertips across the side of his jaw. He had yellowing bruises from some of the banging around yesterday. 

With a glower down at his nightshirt, he started to strip it off, wincing at the tight muscles and aches as he moved wrong -- and pretty much every movement was wrong at this point. 

Looking down at himself, then back in the mirror, he forced himself to stay calm as he traced bruises and lightly kneaded sore, strained muscles. His arm looked to be in especially bad shape, from the porch swing and the dining room chair -- there was some truly spectacular bruising all up the underside of his inner arm. 

Lex sighed shakily, then bent over and swallowed a groan as he retrieved the nightshirt. He started slightly at a knock on the door, then frowned in puzzlement at the following silence. 

"...Ah, yes?" Lex finally called out, when he realized that he should say something. 

"Lex?" came Clark's muffled voice. 

"Yes?" The corners of Lex's mouth twitched up. 

"Are you ok?" 

Was he? "I suppose so," he responded, leaning on the sink a little.

"Are you decent?" 

Lex blinked. He supposed he was, but most people didn't think so... 

"Um, I mean -- can I come in?" Clark said hurriedly. Lex winced as he belatedly realized he had said what he'd been thinking out loud. 

"Of course, it's your house," Lex replied easily, not really thinking through the consequences of that-- 

\--as Clark opened the door, stepped in, and immediately closed it behind him-- 

\--which left him alone in the same room as his friend -- alien -- friend. 

Alien friend. Right. 

"Lex..." Clark said, looking him over, and Lex was too out of it to tell whether the concern was more for him and his appearance, or for Clark himself for the way Lex was undoubtedly looking at him. Given the way Clark was focusing on his bruises, he was hopeful it was the former over the latter. 

"Do they know?" Lex asked. Clark looked at him blankly. 

_Oh, please god, let him **not** try and convince me that I dreamed all of last night up as some sick delirium,_ Lex prayed. He didn't think he could take it. Worse, he was afraid that Clark might be able to make him believe it, and if Clark did that then Lex would be forever doubting his own sanity.

Lex took in a slightly shaky breath. "Do they know that I know?" he asked again, quietly. 

Clark's eyes widened, then he sucked in a breath and shook his head. "I got it back in the ce-- where it belongs before they got back, yes," he said lowly, glancing at the door when he cut off the word 'cellar'. He looked vaguely nervous. 

"Then what's wrong?" Lex asked. 

Clark stepped over, closer, getting in Lex's personal space. "Mom's on the prowl," he said quietly, almost under his breath as he ghosted hands over Lex's hands, arm, head oh-so-gently. It was a jarring contrast to the firm rigidity of the night before. An interesting puzzle -- he hoped Clark would unwind for him someday. "She knows something's up; she just doesn't know what, yet." Clark finished and... didn't step back a little, like Lex had expected. Instead, Clark stayed where he was, kept moving large hands with light finger touches slowly down Lex's arms, almost absently. "She told me yesterday that she wanted me to cool it off with you for awhile. You being here right after that? Is kind of..." he trailed off, looking for a word. 

"Counterintuitive? Counterproductive? Inconvenient?" Lex supplied, then blinked as what Clark had said caught up with him. He'd assumed that Mrs. Kent had probably said something to Clark about keeping his distance from Lex, just as she had warned him away from her family, but... well, it hurt. All he could think was that perhaps he had not truly believed it before, to feel this way at this confirmation of what he had logically deduced earlier. 

"Suspicious," Clark amended, finally having finished chewing over the concept. 

"I'm sorry that I'm making trouble for you, Clark," he apologized truthfully, then stifled another yawn as he leaned against Clark's chest slightly, enjoying the soft touches. And Lex silently laughed at himself for his sporadic abbreviated panic attacks. He just couldn't keep 'Clark' and 'alien' together in his brain for any appreciable length of time -- they just didn't fit right. Clark as an alien-baby rocketed to Earth was seeming less-likely all the while, and the Clark-playing-host-to-a-friendly-alien-symbiote theory was gaining ground -- assuming that the thing must either defer to Clark a lot, or be asleep most of the time, or similar. Lex blinked lazily and wondered how on earth he himself could still be tired after sleeping so much -- more tired than he was after the earlier rude awakening, in fact. 

"You're no trouble -- not really," Clark demurred. "Um, we should probably get you some food, and into another warm bath. Maybe the bath first." 

"Why?" Lex asked, eyes slowly shuttering. 

"Because you're starting to shiver again." 

Lex realized that Clark was right, and he let out a breath that might as well have been a sigh. Considering that he had the day off sick, and keeping his fever high enough to help him burn off his cold _was_ pretty high on his to-do list at the moment... "If you think it will help get my core temperature up...?" 

Clark nodded, and slowly pushed Lex away from him. Clark took the nightshirt, dangling from Lex's fingers, away from him, folded it, and put it down off to the side on a chair. Lex tried not to groan at the stiffness of his muscles as he started to remove the drawstring pants, but it wasn't too long before Clark was helping him out of his nightwear. He tried to ignore Clark's slowly-developing frown as Clark dropped down and helped Lex in undressing the rest of the way. Lex didn't mind the help, given that he almost overbalanced at one point, stepping out of the pants ...or would have if Clark's shoulder hadn't been available at just the right height for him to grab and brace against.

"Ah, you can leave those on!" Clark all but squeaked from his kneeling position when Lex made to slide the boxers off, reaching up and holding them up in place by the elastic waistband as Lex started, then aborted, his own tug downwards. Lex tilted his head at him as Clark let go, then watched him carefully as Clark turned away and started the tap going in the tub. 

"Really, Clark, it's like you've never seen another man naked before," Lex gently teased with a soft smile, settling down next to Clark on the floor at a more-than-leisurely pace while Clark finished fiddling about with the temperature knobs. He was perfectly content to sit and wait.

"Seeing naked guys in the showers in the locker room at school and at home in my bathroom are two _totally_ different things, Lex!" Clark exclaimed, and as Lex tilted his head back to get a better look at Clark's turned-away face, he saw that Clark was blushing bright red and it was only getting deeper. 

"Really?" Lex smiled, intrigued. 

Clark nodded, turning his head towards Lex automatically and glancing at him before jerking it away again. Lex frowned, then felt horribly resigned. 

"Not much of a sight to look upon, am I?" Lex said lowly, looking at the wall, keeping the usual venom and seething hatred and disdain out of his voice, which he more often than not portrayed openly to cover the pain and self-loathing he felt when it came to this.

"I'm more worried about how much it hurts," Clark muttered before pushing off the tile floor and straightening, done messing with the tub drain and the water knobs. "You must be one giant ache -- your bruises look like they've got bruises," he frowned, glancing over Lex again.

Lex looked at him blankly for a moment before realizing that Clark didn't seem to have a problem with his physical appearance at all, just his (un)healthy collection of bumps, bruises, and assortment of other wounds on top of it. Then he realized that a lack of body hair on a guy might not be such an abnormal sight to Clark yet, being only 14. Interestingly -- or oddly -- enough, Lex's baldness and other not-so-flattering physical characteristics didn't seem to register with Clark at all, Lex realized, as Clark's eyes lingered as he stepped closer to Lex, then almost tentatively brought up a hand to lightly snag Lex's arm. Clark pulled it towards him and gently, oh-so-gently, fingered the bruises, almost probing them, before blinking and letting his hand fall away, seeming to mentally shake himself.

"Ah, y-you should get in now," Clark said, moving behind Lex and half-helping, half-pushing him into the tub. Lex noted Clark had started to blush again.

Lex smiled ruefully and slowly sank into the warm water, settling back against the, by comparison, freezing-cold sides of the tub with a groan. He started slightly as he felt his head lifted up momentarily and a towel placed at the back of his neck. Lex shivered slightly and relaxed against the fluffy cottony textile, his head dipping back at an almost dangerous angle.

"I'm going to fall asleep in here if you're not careful," Lex warned with a slight chuckle, then his eyes blinked open as Clark's arms encircled him. He raised his head and sat up a little, and looked down as Clark nestled his head against his right shoulder and the side of the tub and more-or-less became a human seatbelt, kneeling on the floor next to him, face turned away from him.

"Clark?"

"Mmmmnn."

"What are you doing?" Lex asked lightly, slowly letting his head fall back again.

The response he got back sounded a little like a muttered "Keeping you from falling in," but Clark was a bit slouched and seemed far too relaxed at the moment, almost half-asleep. At least until Lex remembered the previous night's panic and didn't doubt for a moment that he'd be completely incapable of slipping under the water surface, so long as Clark didn't move.

Lex decided not to worry about it, so long as Clark didn't actually fall asleep. If Clark did, well...

"Aren't you worried I'll get you wet?" Lex asked, with thoughts of splashing Clark lightly if he started to hold him too close for his own safety or comfort.

"No. It'll wash."

"You mean 'it'll dry.' "

"That, too."

Lex bit down on a smile.

The bald billionaire let his eyes flutter close and his thoughts drift as he listened to the faucet dump water into the tub and felt the water line slowly rise. He was almost beginning to doze off when he felt Clark move away and heard the water turn off. He slitted his eyes open in time to see Clark finish adjusting things before sliding back to curl around him, this time unreservedly snuggling up to him with a soft, almost pleased-sounding sigh.

Lex wrapped his hands around the edges of the tub to push himself back and a little more upright, but aborted the motion and frowned when he felt an odd roughness along the porcelain surface where he'd grasped it. He let go and gently ran his fingertips across the area, realizing that the enamel was slightly, though not visibly, cracked.

He glanced over at Clark but said nothing. Rather, he brought his damp hands up to wrap around Clark's forearm -- across his chest -- and nearly performed a chin-up in-place as he used Clark as leverage instead. Clark was just as relaxedly nonpliable as he had been the previous evening, and he didn't even seem to notice what Lex had done.

_No wonder he doesn't usually let himself have close physical contact with other people,_ Lex realized. _I certainly noticed right away..._ he frowned, thinking of last night. Then Lex began to wonder if most people would notice. It wasn't as if most guys did more touching between themselves than a slap on the back, or a friendly elbow to the ribs, or a good-natured punch in the arm.

Then Lex blinked as he realized what a risk Clark must take getting into fights, or, rather, why he'd have to avoid them. If he was as solid as steel, and with about as much give, _all over_...

...then people would probably _bruise **themselves**_ trying to hit him. If they hit him. If they managed to connect.

Well, that was both a pleasant and not-pleasant thought. It meant that Clark couldn’t get hurt nearly so easily as most mortal men, in doing what he did that he probably shouldn’t be doing, but it would also mean that he could be caught out in his differences a lot more easily. ...So long as meteor-rock necklaces or power-stealing (...alien-stealing?) teenagers didn’t come into play, at any rate.

Lex lay back in the tub for awhile and tried to relax in the warm water, with a snuggly Clark that could likely accidentally crush him to death with no effort _very_ nearby. ...It was easier than he expected.

After awhile, he realized something, and had to stifle a sigh. “...Clark, the water’s cooling off.”

Clark brought his head up. ...No, he just turned it sideways somewhat to look up at him, without really having to move at all. “You want me to drain and refill it?”

Lex thought about this.

“...What time is it?” he asked of Clark.

Clark had the grace to look a bit sorry. “Um…”

Well, that likely meant that it was either very early, or very late. “Early?” Lex guessed.

“Kind of, yeah,” Clark told him, as he slowly sat up, then rolled up his sleeve and reached in to pull the drain plug for him.

Lex leaned forward a bit and pulled his legs up, loosely curling his arms around his knees.

He considered Clark for a moment.

“...You didn’t happen to do something I shouldn’t know about, to get your morning chores done more quickly than you really should be doing them, did you?” Lex tried, carefully, while watching the water level drop in the tub.

“Nooo,” Clark told him. But then he informed Lex, lightly, and just as carefully did not look at Lex as he said it, “Dad doesn’t care how fast I get my chores done.”

Lex considered this.

“Hm,” Lex said to himself, as he continued to watch the water line drop, and wondered how that would work.

They were both quiet for awhile.

When the water level was only about an inch from the bottom of the tub, Lex roused himself and said, “I think I’d better not impose upon you for a second soaking.”

“I don’t mind,” Clark told him, but it wasn’t an argument; Clark got up and headed for the clean towel pile as he said it.

Lex shifted in place, and started to get up, but Clark was back and by his side to help him up by the time he’d managed to get his legs under him again. He wondered if this was anything like what being old was like: horribly slow, and achy all over for no good reason.

Clark draped a towel over his shoulders, and another over his head. Lex fought the urge to laugh, but the corners of his mouth twitched upwards despite his best effort at the moment.

“Thank you, Clark,” he told him, as he stayed in the tub and started to slowly dry himself off -- he was still wearing boxers, now soaking wet, after all, in deference to Clark’s earlier embarrassment. He’d rather drip water back into the tub, than onto the floor. “But I’d rather not make you late for school.” Clark wasn’t sick, after all, even if Lex was and had decided to take the day off the night before.

Clark hesitated as he took the first wet towel back from Lex. “If that’s the only reason…”

Lex frowned at him slightly, as he dried off his head. “You’re taking the day off, too?” he asked. Clark shrugged at him. “Why?” Was there really that much to do on the farm, that Clark’s parents needed to pull him from school for a day just to help get things back on track and up to speed again, now that the C.E.P. inspectors had finished their surveying and sample-taking?

“School’s closed today,” Clark told him, handing him another towel and turning his back on him.

Lex frowned slightly. It was a weekday. “Why?”

“The power’s still out in some places in town,” Clark told him, as Lex dropped the borrowed underwear, finished drying off and looped the large towel around his waist, then braced a hand on Clark’s arm a bit as he stepped out of the tub. “Well, most places in town, except for the ones with gas generators to keep them going. The school doesn’t have one, and I don’t know if they’ve got the power back on in the building by now, but they didn’t this morning.”

“You went into town already?” Lex asked, shifting forward to stand next to Clark.

Clark looked down at him. “Mom and dad are on the regional call list for flood control. Mom was running a phone tree earlier this morning with some of the town committee members, and dad went in to talk to a bunch of people gathered at the town hall who were worried about all the rain, especially with the dam’s power plant not working right now.”

Lex blinked up at him. He’d noticed that it had been raining a lot last night, but he’d only (belatedly) been worried about tornadoes. It hadn’t even occurred to him that there might be a problem with flooding.

...Then again, he was from the well-paved city of Metropolis. Anyone Kansas born-and-bred might still have to worry about tornadoes, wherever they lived, but the sewers of Metropolis never backed up, and the river that serviced the city docks was both well-maintained and well-managed; it never overflowed its banks.

The Smallville Dam, on the other hand, was man-made, now that he thought about it; it was used as a power generating station for the area, but it also kept the Elbow River from flooding the town. ...And a good thing, too, because LuthorCorp was almost directly downstream of it the dam, along with several of the town’s farms.The Kent Farm wasn’t, thank goodness, but...

“I had to help them set up portable generators and lights in the gym at school afterwards, for a larger gathering place for people,” Clark added, dropping another dry towel over Lex’s shoulders, which he accepted readily, already feeling cold from the exposure to the air. “Everybody can’t just meet up outdoors; it’s still raining too much outside.”

“Is there a... flood watch on?” Lex asked, after having to search his brain for the right term for it.

“Not yet,” Clark told him, as he walked over and opened up the door. “Mostly it’s just been some people with leaky basements so far, and some issues because of the power outage. We’re probably going to need to pitch in and help set up sandbags along some parts of the river either tonight or tomorrow, though. It looks like we might have another pretty bad thunderstorm later tonight, and if the next storm front after that doesn’t go far enough south…”

“...They’ll need to open up the dam outlets up a bit, to make sure that the reservoir doesn’t overflow?” Lex asked, as he followed Clark out. It actually took him a couple seconds to think up the question.

Clark shook his head. “No, they’ve already got those partially-open because of the work that needs to get done on the hydroelectric plant,” Clark said. “It’s not enough. If the flooding gets worse, they’re going to have to close those to keep from breaking the power plant any worse, and open up the spillways instead, to make sure that the reservoir doesn’t overflow.”

“And… you’ll have to put sandbags along those waterways, too,” Lex said slowly, working it out, as they walked back to Clark’s bedroom. Or, well, Clark walked and he mostly shuffled along.

Clark nodded.

It was about the point when Lex was back in Clark’s bedroom that he realized that he had the wrong perspective about the whole situation.

_Not ‘you’. ‘ **We**.’_

“How can I help?” Lex asked, as he sat down on the edge of Clark’s bed and pulled the towel around his shoulders in a little closer to his skin.

Clark turned and looked at him, then frowned.

“No,” he said.

Lex stared up at him, feeling a little taken aback. “But--”

“You are sick; you are _not_ going outside in this rain with pneumonia, or whatever you’ve got,” Clark told him, hands on his hips.

Lex thought about telling Clark that that hadn’t been what he’d been thinking of signing up for, not wanting to risk collapsing in the street -- or, worse, ending up falling into another river and half-drowning again -- then thought the better of it. Instead, he just bypassed that whole argument _in potentia_ entirely.

“I meant helping with… phone things, maybe?” Lex said, then winced at how that sounded. “Coordination?” he tried again.

Clark eyed him.

“...Off-site?” Lex added, at Clark’s look.

Clark crossed his arms. Then he seemed to think the better of that, and moved forward.

“If the best thing you can think of doing right now is ‘phone things’,” Clark told him, while he grabbed the covers up and more or less gently shoved Lex down flat onto the bed, “Then you _really_ need to lie down and sleep more.”

Lex stomach rumbled at him, and he tried not to wince.

“And maybe eat something, not in that order,” Clark continued on without a hitch, as he finished tucking Lex back into bed.

Lex pushed himself upright again. “But--”

And then his traitorous body decided to remind him that, yes, he actually was still sick, thank you, and Lex got caught up in a _very_ poorly-timed coughing jag.

“Nuh-uh,” Clark said, shoving him back down carefully and fixing the blankets again. “I’ll bring up some soup from the kitchen for you, and get you some new clothes. _You_ stay _put_ ,” he told him.

Lex watched him go from his prone position in bed, under the covers, still bundled up in towels underneath that, and revised his thought processes a bit: Clark in mother-hen mode was actually kind of scary, and not to be trifled with.

Also, he was still pretty sure he didn’t want to know whose boxers he kept borrowing.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN:
> 
> *** Warning: possibly-triggering material in this chapter (recollection of past physical abuse). ***
> 
> *** Warning: third-person-limited POV, "unreliable narration" in that this is NOT third-person-OMNISCIENT and thus Lex's issues and mental biases (and hangups, and severe lack of needed psychological counseling, and-and-and, etc.) are strongly showing from about the midway point down. To be clear: some of Lex's mentality towards himself and others is completely out of whack, as in, _a lot_ messed up. (See endnotes for more information.) ***

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was sneaking out of bed. This was a thing that he was doing.

He was twenty-one years of age, and he was sneaking out of someone’s bedroom like he was afraid that he was going to get caught. --Because he was afraid that he was going to get caught.

...or at least very worried about the possibility of such happening to him, and what that would then entail in the matter of consequences. He hadn’t felt this way since before he’d been a teenager.

So he was making a big gamble, here. He’d stayed in bed, and eaten the soup Clark had brought him. He’d taken the change of clothing -- pajamas and socks and underwear that somehow sort-of fit him that he still wasn’t thinking too much about -- with as much grace as he could manage. He’d dressed himself in those clothes and gotten right back into bed, like a good little Luthor-being-mother-henned-by-a-somewhat-alien-Clark.

And then he’d waited for Clark to leave the house.

It had taken awhile. Lex wasn’t actually sure how long, because he didn’t know if he’d just zoned out from a combination of being both bored and sick, or if he’d really fallen asleep again. (And that didn’t even touch upon the fact that Clark’s room was enough of a teenaged mess that he had no idea where his alarm clock was buried, to tell the time by it.)

Lex _thought_ he might’ve heard the front door slam awhile ago, though. He’d been startled (...awake?) by it. And then he’d waited a good bit of time, just to be sure. It was _possible_ that no-one was left in the house, now.

‘Possible’, that is, because Lex couldn’t be sure until he actually went ahead and snuck himself downstairs. Sadly, the Kent farmhouse was well-insulated enough that the normal sorts of non-yelling noise that Lex would otherwise expect to hear when other people were present didn’t travel very well down the farmhouse hallways or through the intervening walls. (The mansion was completely different in this regard, being made of stone that echoed all sorts of sound rather well.)

So Lex was slowly and cautiously moving himself down the stairs -- not because of any old house creaks, because the place was just that solidly built, but because he was trying to carefully listen for any random Kent family members that might yet still be in the house, lying in wait to _get_ him for daring to be up out of bed.

It probably didn’t bode well that he wasn’t sure which of the three Kents might be the worst to have to deal with in this regard. Not because they would all be equally _bad_ , in a sense, but because their expected responses would be so varied and yet likely equally bad _comparatively_ , in the apples-to-oranges sense.

...Except Lex liked apples and oranges, and most fruit in general, so this was probably going to be something more like really-salty-anchovies and coffee-of-a-mud-like-consistency-as-well-as-taste, if he found himself having to choose a couple of really awfully bad things for a workable simile just then.

Lex wasn’t trying to escape the house, though. Oh, no. He was too smart for that. ...No, he was making a break for the _phone_ , not the front door. He’d need to call his mansion staff for extraction on this one. He knew he wasn’t getting out of there on his own.

He made it down the stairs without getting caught. He didn’t hear anyone moving around. Good.

He glanced at the front door, then turned and quietly walked down the hallway, all the way to the end, where the door to the kitchen was.

He carefully sidled up to the kitchen door. Nothing.

He sidled through the doorway, and looked around: kitchen, living room, front windows. Nothing. No-one was here.

Just the light patter of the rain against the windows.

He let out a slow breath and relaxed a bit.

He moved forward, around the refrigerator, towards and to the phone hanging on the wall.

He picked up the receiver, and reached out a hand to the dialpad.

“Lex?”

Lex jumped -- literally _jumped_ \-- in place, and his hands spasmed. He lost hold of the phone, and he grabbed at it. He tried several times, in fact, missing it **every. single. time.** on the way down, and pretty much only got his arms thoroughly tangled up in the cord in the process. And then he watched as the phone receiver proceeded to finish its downward journey by hitting the floor unencumbered with an ungodly loud clatter.

Lex stared down at the phone, which was making droning dialtone noises up at him.

He slowly looked up at Mrs. Kent, who was covering her mouth with a hand. The corners of her eyes were crinkled up a bit.

“...I think that being sick has somehow turned me nine again,” he confessed to her helplessly, because he hadn’t been this discoordinated since… well, since he'd been nine years old. Before he’d started attending Excelsior Prep, certainly.

Then he realized that ‘nine’ might not be completely out of bounds, because, prior to last night, he hadn’t been sick since he’d been nine years old and caught up in the meteor shower, and--

_...Oh._

He’d wondered why Clark had seemed so uncertain and oddly-apologetic about his hair loss, when he’d first heard of it, and of the cause behind it.

Then he felt a slight shock run through him, as he realized that he’d just been caught by the very thing that Clark had most warned him about earlier: a prowling mom.

_Uh oh._

She walked over to him from the side of one of the big armchairs in the living room. She’d probably been sitting in it. No wonder he hadn’t seen her. ...But she’d been so _quiet._ He hadn’t heard her. What had she been doing?

...Had she been lying in wait to catch him?

“Who were you trying to call?”

Lex stifled a flinch, and he hoped that he wasn’t in trouble with her for trying to use their landline without permission. Not so much for being up out of bed; Clark would be worried about that. Martha was the one that didn’t want him hanging around Clark just then, and thus certainly not in her house; therefore, she should be happy about his imminent exodus, provided she was all right with him making that call on her landline. His cellphone wasn’t working though, so surely she couldn’t be angry with him about that? How else would he manage to let anyone know he was there, otherwise, to leave?

“...Lex?”

“I was going to call my house staff,” Lex answered honestly, as he straightened a little bit, and slowly tried to disentangle his arms and wrists from the phone cord. Martha moved forward to help him. “I think Clark is out to get me ‘well’, but I’m a little worried about his methodology for doing so.” Frankly, Lex didn’t think he’d be able to survive staying wrapped up in bed that long. “I was thinking that it might be better for... everyone if I... escaped. And went home.”

Mrs. Kent’s hands stilled on the phone cord, and she raised an eyebrow. “‘Escaped’?” she said.

Lex nodded.

Mrs. Kent’s forehead creased just slightly. “Escaped.”

“Just… just a little bit,” Lex said, feeling a bit nervous about it for some inexplicable reason..

“And you would be escaping from…?” She unlooped the last bit of the cord and finished freeing him as she waited for him to respond. She also had a facial expression that closely resembled one Pamela had sometimes given him, when he was in something approaching _very_ big trouble with her.

Lex felt his sluggish mind attempt to race, and instead felt his thoughts trip over themselves. --That is, he started to try and think up a quick but serviceable lie that would get him _out_ of trouble, but his brain sort-of stalled out in the process of it.

...Well, technically what had happened was that his mind went a little **blank** , because he couldn’t conceive of the fact that he was about to try and lie to Mrs. Kent -- _Clark’s mother_ \-- about something.

Then he remembered that Clark wanted him to not tell his (Clark’s) parents… well, not _just_ Clark’s parents -- not tell _anyone_ , actually -- about how he now knew that Clark was... ... ...

...this would involve lying to Clark’s parents as part-and-parcel of that, wouldn’t it? So what was one more lie, in the face of that?

It made Lex feel a bit queasy though, now faced with the real and immediate prospect of it, in the very near future.

And Clark’s _mother_ was still giving him _that look_.

“Please don’t make me help eat everything in the fridge before it goes bad,” Lex all-but-begged of her. That was the worst punishment he could think of at the moment that she might come up with for him (while he was still somewhat hampered by his illness in his ability to... escape…) It was a prospect which Clark had alluded to earlier, when he’d brought up soup to him in bed: that Lex was helping with just that.

He really didn’t want to know what she might come up with, though, as a suitable adult punishment for whatever she seemed unhappy with him about (...maybe it wasn’t the phone, maybe it was just him being there and having seen Clark earlier?)

Mrs. Kent blinked at him, then she made a slightly confused face at him. “You’re running away from my cooking?” she asked slowly, in rising tones.

“What?” Lex said, staring at her blankly. Then it hit him. What he'd just said. Right after her question about... “No!” he said, “No, I mean--” Lex really hoped she realized that he hadn’t meant how it must have sounded, not meant what he'd said as an insult in any way.

Mrs. Kent let out a soft laugh, so that probably meant she had. Realized it.

God, his brain was working slowly today.

“I just-- Clark said that everything need to be eaten because of the power outage and… I’ve _seen_ your fridge,” he told her, in an attempt to explain. “I don’t think I can eat that much!” he confessed.

“Lex!” He heard the laughter in her voice, and wondered where the not-being-happy-with-him had gone off to. “I’m not going to stuff you with food ‘til you burst; you know that, right?”

Lex felt himself color slightly. In actuality… He’d kind of always had that impression of her, and Clark’s intermittent confirmations that, yes, she would like it if he ate more, hadn’t exactly helped do anything other than serve as strong evidence to firmly reinforce that position.

“...No?” he tried.

“Lex...” She shook her head at him, as she reached down and picked the now urgently-beeping phone off of the floor. “I haven’t done that before, have I?” she said, as she put the phone back on the hook.

“Well, no,” Lex had to admit, because... Yes, she had sometimes made extra food on occasion, when he had come over to see Clark and hang out in the barn. She usually made an afternoon snack for Clark to eat before dinner-proper, and Lex was the one who generally ate the extra when she did that. And yes, Mrs. Kent usually seemed a bit almost-worryingly happy about it, while Jonathan alternately glowered and complained a bit over it, though he’d never said anything specific. But... she’d never **made** him eat anything before, or even pushed him very hard on the issue by, say, giving him staggeringly large portions to eat.

“And it would be helpful if we had another person to help us finish it off,” she told him. “It won’t last another hour or two, at most, even if the power comes back on.” She sighed as she glanced over at the fridge, then back to him. “But I certainly wouldn’t force you.”

“But it tastes _so good_ ,” Lex said plaintively. If she put food in front of him that was that good, he’d want to eat it, and likely try to ...and feel guilty when he was unable to finish it, which was kind of the problem. She wouldn’t need to force him; yet there would still be forcing involved.

Clark’s mother offered him a rueful smile, like she knew what he was thinking.

Lex wished the pajama-pants he was wearing had pockets, so he could shove his hands in them.

“You still haven’t told me what you think you’d be escaping from, though,” Mrs. Kent reminded him, as she turned to face him.

Lex considered the thought of lying again, then discarded it. He’d only lie to her if he had to. He was already sick; he didn’t need to make himself feel even more horrid.

“...Clark didn’t want me to leave last night,” Lex told her, and, in retrospect, he wasn’t entirely sure why that was. Maybe he’d worried about Lex leaving before he’d given his promise to Clark about not-telling about... ... ...or maybe it really had just been that: “He was worried about me going out in the storm while I was still sick, I think.” That _had_ been what Clark had said, right?

Mrs. Kent frowned at him slightly.

“So I guess I’d be escaping from Clark,” Lex told her. “Out into the rain and everything, leaving while still not feeling well.” Which would make Clark… not all that happy with him.

...very shortly after their first real, and very bad, fight.

Maybe he shouldn’t be trying so hard to leave. Clark might think he was trying to get away. ...From him. Which was sort-of the case, but not in the way Clark might think.

_Well, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Luthor._

Mrs. Kent stepped towards him, actually right up in front of him.

“You don’t seem that sick,” she said, lifting a hand to touch his chin and looking him over carefully, with a slight frown.

“Clark thinks I have pneumonia,” Lex told her uncomfortably, standing a bit still. He was glad he wasn’t looking all that sick to _someone_ , though. ...Did that mean he was getting better again, finally? He hadn’t coughed once since getting up, this time. _...yet._

“Clark tends to worry a bit,” Mrs. Kent said, taking a light hold of his chin and, with a bit of pressure…

Lex let her turn his head one way, then the other, and…

She stopped her guiding motion rather abruptly, and her eyes narrowed. She shifted her fingers, and...

“What is this?” Mrs. Kent asked him, and it was about that point that Lex realized that the bruises he’d seen on his jaw in the mirror earlier must still be somewhat evident.

“I, ah…” Blast-and-drat. He should’ve checked himself over again in the mirror in the bathroom before coming down the stairs. He usually healed faster than that, though -- the bruises had already shifted to yellowing, and it had been hours since then, he thought, with a lot of rest in-between.

He settled on an, “I’m fine,” but only realized after a beat that the way he’d stepped back from her while saying it, not to mention the nervousness in his voice as he’d done it, clearly indicated otherwise. Which was why he usually did neither of those things. ...He still was very much not thinking clearly, to not be controlling his reactions as he should.

“Lex, you’re hurt,” came the accusation. “How did this happen?” she said, gesturing at his jaw, and removing all doubt on exactly what she’d noticed.

“It’s…” _nothing_ \-- except it wasn’t, it was a something that was still there -- _just an accident_ \-- except it hadn’t been that, either, it had come about through malice aforethought -- _not a big deal_ \-- except Clark seemed to think otherwise -- “...fine.” Which was true to him, at least. “It’ll be gone within another six hours at the outside,” he reassured her, raising his hands, palms outward. At least, it would be another six hours according to his revised timetable -- taking into account the fact that he was also sick, too, and his ‘new’ apparently-reduced healing rate. Simple math; painfully easy almost.

If he’d been his usual self, then the leftover bruising he’d seen in the mirror earlier would’ve been gone only another hour or two after he'd been ushered back to bed post-bath, he knew from experience. (...And if he hadn't been sick at all, it'd likely have disappeared overnight, or not even bloomed under his skin as visible bruises in the first place. He'd gotten a lot more healthy as he'd gotten older.)

Her narrowed eyes took on a piercing quality.

“Lex,” she said with ponderous care, “How do you know how long it takes bruises on your face to heal?”

“I…” He blinked at her, not really sure how to answer that. “You don’t?” he asked, nonplussed, not really sure how someone could _not_ know that.

Mrs. Kent gave him a very long look. It was silent for a time, except for the sound of the rain outdoors.

And then Mrs. Kent told him, slowly, “Lex, in order for me to know how long it would take for bruises on my face to heal, I’d have to be hit in the face first, to have bruises.”

Lex blinked at her.

...And then he realized what he’d just implied.

“I’m sorry!” he told her frantically. “I didn’t mean to suggest--” because of _course_ he didn’t think that Jonathan would--

“Lex.” Mrs. Kent moved forward and lay her hands on top of his shoulders lightly. She was still staring into his eyes. “Lex. Just… breathe.”

Lex took in a breath, a little too deeply.

...and then nearly doubled-over in place, coughing.

“S-sorry,” he managed to croak out, after he’d finished his latest coughing jag, one hand one his knee, the other clutching his chest.

Mrs. Kent was looking down at him grimly.

“Well, you’re definitely sick…” she told him, and she put a hand on his arm and guided him over and down into a chair at the kitchen table.

“Yes,” Lex said somewhat miserably. He really didn’t like being sick.

“...though now I’m also wondering how you got that bruise on the back of your head,” Mrs. Kent continued on.

_Erk._ Blast his stupid coughing fit!

“That was an accident,” he told her, grimacing at his own stupid overreaction yesterday as he sat himself down a little shakily, and glanced away from her as she took a chair next to him. “I was in the back storeroom of the Talon when the lights went out." He rubbed a hand over his face. "I was severely startled, and I tripped and fell over backwards.” He must have hit the floor harder than he thought, for it to bruise noticeably. He’d been knocked out before and not had it result in any bruising.

...Then again, when was the last time he’d been knocked out by a blow to the head, and **not** regained consciousness and been back on his feet in minutes? --He most certainly _must_ have hit harder than usual.

“I’m not concussed, am I?” he asked, looking up at her quite seriously. He didn’t _think_ he was, but then...

She frowned at him, then shifted her chair around the side of the table and resettled right next to him, before reaching forward and holding his chin again.

She stared at his eyes for a moment, looking back and forth -- comparing his pupil size, most likely.

“...No, I don’t think so,” she said finally, letting go of him and leaning back. “Your eyes seem normally dilated, at least. Have you been feeling dizzy, or nauseous? Any headache? Or problems walking?”

“No,” Lex said. “Not really.”

Mrs. Kent gave him a long look.

“I’m not dizzy, and my appetite is fine,” Lex told her. If anything, he might’ve been eating more than he usually did. “I don’t really have a headache.” It was more of a persistent full-body ache. “...And the only real problem I have moving around is that I feel tired enough that my knees want to give out on me,” which admittedly was not the same thing as difficulties with balance control.

“You seem a bit fuzzy, though,” she told him, quite seriously.

“Flannel,” he deadpanned, pointing at the borrowed pajamas. He’d caught what she was referring to this time, though: his mental state. But he was pretty sure that his problems there were mostly the fault of his cold. Or bout of pneumonia. Whatever.

She gave him a small smile for a moment, before it faded.

“You still haven’t told me how you got those bruises on your jaw,” she reminded him.

She had that Pamela-like look on her face again, making him feel all uncomfortable and squirmy and nine.

It was about that point that Lex realized he was being mothered at.

_As if I needed something worse than a prowling-mom just now,_ he thought with a sinking feeling.

“It’s fine,” Lex repeated. “--The situation’s been resolved,” Lex told her before she could interrupt him. “I had a confrontation with the two men responsible for dumping those chemicals on your farm. Neither of them will cause you any trouble anymore.” Not with one of them dead and the other in jail, anyway.

He mindfully didn’t cover the details; namely, that one of them had been a lunatic impostor who’d gotten too into his role, and had been shot dead by his homicidal and now-jailed employer. He also decidedly did not mention that the homicidal employer had been the brother of a girl he’d _liked_ , a girl who he’d accidentally forced into killing her own fiance… a girl who had committed suicide from the strain a year ago without Lex even knowing about it.

After all, if Clark hadn’t told his parents what little he knew about what had happened at Club Zero... well, Lex certainly wasn’t about to. He didn’t want to talk about any of it with anyone, not even Clark, let alone anyone else. _Certainly_ not Mrs. Kent!

The way Mrs. Kent was looking at him didn’t seem to have improved any. Then he remembered something else.

“But the final responsibility for the incident is mine,” Lex told her. “I’ll be happy to pay for the replacement of your herd, and also the costs for any further cleanup that needs to occur.”

...Why was she was still looking at him like that?

“I’d hand you a check right now, but I don’t have my checkbook on me, or know how much it will cost...” he tried, and now she was starting to frown at him, on top of the look. “I’d offer to help replace the herd directly, instead of just money, but I only know about horses, not cows?” he tried, starting to feel a little frantic, because was this maybe more of a Jonathan-thing like that? Money being less-helpful than straight-up work and solid goods?

“Lex…” she said, sounding a little exasperated with him, which wasn’t much better, and Lex tried not to wince.

"...Yes?" he asked tentatively.

Mrs. Kent seemed to compose herself visibly, trying for... patience? Lex wasn't sure. She reached forward and captured Lex's hands, clasping them between in her own. He looked down as she did so, then up to her in puzzlement. "Lex," she repeated, her gaze steady on his own, “...How do you know how long it takes bruises on your face to heal?” she asked of him, ponderously, _again_.

Lex felt a little like running away, just then. She hadn't forgotten what she'd asked, and he really didn't want to answer that question.

"Does it really matter all that much?" Lex tried, almost desperately.

"Yes," she said, and she was giving him a full-on Pamela-like look, Martha-Kent-style.

She hadn't forgotten what she'd asked, and _she wasn't letting him dodge the question_.

Lex really wanted to twist away from her and bolt, except she'd captured his hands so he couldn't. ...He'd probably also double over coughing on the first deep breath he pulled, trying to shove himself into a sprint to get back upstairs.

Mrs. Kent continued to look on, but Lex absolutely did not want to answer that question. He remembered full well how Pamela had always reacted to his having garnered new bruises for pissing off his father, and he did not want a repeat of the same with Mrs. Kent, thank-you-very-much.

The first time his father had hit him, Pamela had wanted to know what had happened, and when he'd told her, she'd been livid with fury. She'd marched him right over to his mother's rooms, and there had been a _very_ unhappy conversation behind closed-doors while he'd sat on the floor in the hallway with his chin tucked down to his knees, waiting for her to come out again. He hadn't really heard them very clearly, but Pamela had been angry, his mother had been terse, and when they were done, Pamela had left his mother's room -- just about slamming the door behind her, not any calmer than before -- and grabbed his arm and pulled him upright. She'd marched him straight-backed right to his rooms and, after some under-her-breath angry muttering as she'd treated his bruises as best as bruises could be treated, he'd ended up sequestered there with her for the day, sullenly staring at the walls and bored out of his mind, as if everything else hadn't been bad enough.

The next time his father hit him, and Pamela had demanded to know what had happened, he'd refused to say anything. He hadn't been about to get in trouble twice for the same thing again -- not if he could help it. If she wanted to punish him properly, she'd have to go and ask his father to tell her what he'd done wrong.

She never did that. Instead, whenever she caught him out again from there on in, he'd get sequestered with her in his room until dinnertime, with her in a quietly-bad mood the entire time, knitting in the corner, needles clicking together jaggedly like they were upset.

He got that she hadn't just been mad at him; she had also been frustrated and angry with Lionel. But she always got mad at Lex, first. So, he'd started trying to avoid his father twice as hard as he'd used to -- he couldn't get in trouble doing something wrong if he wasn't actually around his dad to screw things up where he could see and hear him, right? And when he'd inevitably still screwed something up anyway, mouthed off or disrespected his father or otherwise not done what he'd been told to do, he hadn't gone running back to his rooms anymore after; instead, he'd hid out in the gardens until he'd managed to stop quietly sniffling, and whatever hurts he'd garnered that time didn't sting quite so much.

He'd liked his mother's gardens a lot for that reason; they'd smelled nice, the plants were interesting, and there had been all sorts of little hideaways in there -- he could get lost in them for hours. And by the time he left those gardens, his hurts and bruises weren't all that apparent anymore to anybody who didn't know what to look for, or where to look for them. Usually he was okay enough to leave by dinnertime; he could check his reflection in the small pond to see if he could leave earlier, if it wasn't something that could be covered up by his clothes. Sometimes, if his mother was there, too, he'd sit down next to her and snuggle up to her side, hiding his face against her in case Pamela came by. His mother would note any visible wounds (and her own fights with Lionel tended to be worse after that in those cases) but she never said a word to him about it, and they'd spent many quiet afternoons together that way in the gardens, with her reading softly to him. Luckily, he didn't get hit in the face a whole lot -- usually that was from losing his balance and hitting the floor or the side of a table if he hadn't braced himself right. And as long as he waited until whatever else (usually his arms and shoulders) didn't hurt anymore, and he could move around okay, he could get away with it without anyone noticing. He wasn't a baby anymore; Pamela never came to look in on him in the shower, he tucked himself into bed at night before she came into his room to check on him, and all the nightclothes he chose to wear had nice long sleeves and legs, just in case.

His father had hit his mother sometimes, too, and Lex had hated him anew every time he did that; he knew it was wrong, but he didn't know how to stop it. Sometimes it made Lex wish he was a girl, though, because at least his mother could go off and absent herself to her rooms, putting on makeup to cover over things when they were visible. Boys couldn't wear makeup. Instead, Lex had had to learn to hide and avoid to begin with, or otherwise hide and avoid until he felt better, well enough to come out and face the world again, without anyone knowing how much he'd really been hurt. And those skills had ended up serving him well in later years at Excelsior Prep, though he'd still ended up suffering through a lot of pushing and shoving and scraped up knees and elbows -- and sometimes a bloody nose or two. He hadn't liked it, not at all, but he supposed it had all toughened him up a bit in the end, because by the time he hit his senior year, he could hide under the covers in his dorm room for no more than an hour or two at most and -- for anything short of a cracked rib or worse -- come out looking and feeling like he'd never been hurt to begin with. (Not that that stopped him from "pranking" his assailants later to get revenge on them each and every time that happened. They deserved it for the pain.)

It had taken him a long time to realize that maybe he actually could do something about it. There had been a turning point one day, a little more than a year after his mother had died, when he'd come back from school for the holidays and Lionel had... well, he'd pulled his hand back to hit him and Lex had just snapped. He'd been getting too much of that from Oliver Queen and his crew back at Excelsior, and, just, he was sick and tired of it!

He'd talked back to his father before, of course, but this time had been different. Maybe he'd been angrier than usual; Lex still didn't know what had gone differently, really.

He'd stood up at his full height, shoulders back, fists clenched, looked his father straight in the eye, and snarled out, "You know, you might want to take off those rings first. You wouldn't want to leave a mark that won't heal again, this time!" Because something in the way Lionel had moved had made him think this was about to be a fist, not an open-handed slap like usual, and that split upper lip from when he'd been six had _never_ healed right.

Lionel had stopped, astonished.

And then his father had grinned and let out a laugh.

It hadn't been a _nice_ grin, mind you. Lionel had stepped forward, grasped his shoulder -- almost bruisingly hard -- and marched him out of the room, and the punishment that Lex _had_ received that night had been far worse than any mere single physical hit would have been. _But._

For the first time, Lex had realized that he actually _could_ control the situation somewhat. He could control what happened to him. --He'd still gotten in trouble, absolutely. He'd still been punished, yes.

_But he'd still stopped Lionel from hitting him._

That had been a turning point for him in his young life. He'd started using words to fight back a hell of a lot more often than just hiding to begin with. Generally, doing so meant that his mouth got him into a _lot_ more trouble than he would've been in otherwise, but at least it was trouble he'd _chosen_ , and **earned**. One way or another, from then on in he gave as good as he got.

His father had also never hit him again.

As time passed, and after seeing abbreviated visits and interactions between his only friend at school (Duncan) and his family (mainly Duncan's father, who came to pick Duncan up and drop him off when he had to leave the grounds), Lex had come to realize that, no, father-son interactions did _not_ require physical abuse, like those bruising shoulder grabs Lionel still sometimes gave him those days, not even when the son was mouthing off in public. Problems _could_ be worked out by talking them out.

It had been a good thing that he'd realized this on one of Duncan's _outbound_ trips, because he'd spent the rest of the weekend alternating between sulking and raging in their shared dorm room alone, and in retrospect it probably would've freaked Duncan out if he'd saw him like that. And Lex slowly and methodically realized -- and finally convinced himself -- that Lionel had always treated him like something beneath him when he hadn't had to, had always expected unreasonable, impossible things from him, and if Lionel had never given him a chance, would never give him a real chance, why should Lex even _try_ anymore? He'd known it before, but it had been a vague sort of knowing. By the end of that weekend, he was **sure**. And when he'd hit college, that understanding had only solidified: if Lionel was never going to give him a chance, Lex was perfectly free to not give a damn about him in return, and despise his work and his company as much as he liked as the main cause of that friction, since _everything_ his father did was about LuthorCorp, LuthorCorp, LuthorCorp; Lionel cared more about his stupid company than _him_.

The other thing that he'd come to realize, that had never gotten any easier to bear, was that Pamela had never loved him. She'd lied to him about taking him with her after his mother died; she'd left him behind with Lionel, never even said goodbye. She'd only been there for the money. Because it was **her job** as his nanny. (God knew what she'd actually really thought of him; he'd been a stupid kid who'd let himself be fooled completely.) And if he'd ever had any doubt about that, it had been abolished one night when he'd been drinking and movie-watching in college and seen something that had left him pale as a sheet and stone-cold sober. It had just been some stupid scene in a flighty rom-com bullshit dime-a-dozen romance -- somebody's girlfriend jumping in front of her boyfriend to defend him against her father, getting in-between them, between her father who had his fists clenched in fury and was bearing down on the man she loved and cared about and... -- it had struck at him with the force of a hammerblow.

He'd ended up staggering out of the house and throwing up over the person's balcony, to catcalls from people that had had no clue what was wrong with him. Because he'd finally realized she'd never cared. He'd finally realized that Pamela had never gotten mad at his father when she was actually in Lionel's presence _because_ she'd never cared about him, not really. Because if she _had_ cared, and thought Lex was being punished too harshly, she would've stood up to Lionel and said something to his face about it, _just like that woman in the film_ , wouldn't she? _Wouldn't she?!_ And she had never done that, ever; she'd never even tried, **not once**.

So, when Mrs. Kent looked at him the same way Pamela had used to look at him, all those years ago, waiting for and expecting a response...

...he didn't feel the least bit of guilt when he looked her straight in the eye and told her, "I don't know how long it takes bruises on my face to heal. I was wrong earlier, and I'm just guessing now."

Because he'd already gotten in trouble for this once already, she was already mad at him about the illegal dumping that had gone on, and it was none of her business, anyway, with all of her fake concern. So there.

Mrs. Kent gave him a look of pure consternation -- _oh, come on!_ She couldn't possibly have been able to tell that he wasn't telling her the truth, could she? ...and it wasn't like he'd been **lying** exactly, since he _had_ been wrong earlier, and _was_ sort-of guessing now...

...and then he was saved by Clark, and then Jonathan Kent, piling in the kitchen door from the outside, all but soaking wet.

Er. ...Okay, maybe not _saved_ , exactly, but still. A welcome distraction, right?

\--Actually, _it was!_ He wouldn't have to eat all the food in the fridge all by himself now! Hooray!

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Not to end this chapter on a downer, but… The whole abusive-family thing with Lex? **Canon.** (Though admittedly my interpretation and extrapolation of past events in this chapter is likely a good bit biased in some respects.)
> 
> ...Don’t believe me? Well, if you want to read my discussion on the matter, the meta got so long that I posted it as a separate thing. [Go here if you really want to read it.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3722146/) I’d almost recommend against it, though, given that this series is supposed to consist of squishy Clark-and-Lex early-season goodness (or madness, take your pick). This meta piece is not a cheery read; there is no humor in it. I am downright serious as hell.
> 
> ...aaaaaand then I originally wrote even more meta underneath this thing that was _also_ too long for the end notes (seriously, what the hell Jo?), so I've added it to the other meta piece as a "chapter two" after the fact with the posting of this chapter of Family Stuff: see [link](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3722146/chapters/16784299/) if you didn't read the full piece and want to see the specific additional meta-notes that deal specifically with chapter 3 of this piece. (Not that I necessarily recommend it, either. It's also not a cheery read.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Congratulations, folks -- you’ve got me writing this instead of sleeping or doing anything else today... x_x;;;;;

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex didn’t wait for Mrs. Kent to try and call him on his not-a-lie (though partially-misleading) statements about what he did or did not know about his own rate of healing, or how he knew it. He wasn’t _stupid_.

He immediately jumped into conversation with Clark instead.

"I call claim on the vegetable drawers in the bottom of the fridge, and the rest of the chicken soup," Lex told Clark, swaying slightly in place where he sat. It'd be a win-win for him; Lex was good with vegetables, and the produce the Kents produced tended to always be somewhere in the realm of really excellent. " **You** have to eat the other three levels of food."

"What about the freezer?" Clark tossed back immediately.

"Parents," Lex said, pointing at them.

"'Kay," Clark shrugged, but he was smiling as he shrugged off his raincoat and started pulling off his boots. "But there might be swapping--" he began.

"No! No swapping!" said Lex. "I get the vegetables! You get the filling stuff!"

"Soup is filling," Clark said cheerfully.

"--except the soup, because I called dibs on that explicitly and I am sick," Lex told him huffily.

"Swapping between me and my parents?" Clark tried, with a quick glance and a smile.

Lex eyed him. "...I accept your parameters."

Clark grinned.

"Why is he still here?" Jonathan Kent rumbled to his wife, as he peeled off his own coat. "And apparently eating my food?"

Lex watched as Jonathan Kent handed his coat off to Mrs. Kent, who had stood up and come over to him. And then scolded him as she hung it up for him, saying, "Jonathan, whatever we don't eat, we'll have to toss out--”

Success! She wasn’t bringing up the bruises on his face again!

“--and I'm _not_ sending him out into that weather while he's still sick," she continued, in exactly the same tone of exasperation.

Lex blinked at her. That was odd. She made it sound like she wasn’t happy about the idea of him leaving, which was rather the opposite of wanting him gone. And... 'still sick'? How long was she thinking about having him stay here?

"I thought your mother didn't want me around..." Lex murmured up at Clark, as he came over to stand behind the chair he was sitting in... and wrap his arms around his shoulders from behind in a sort of half-hug.

Clark didn't say anything, but he didn't look confused. ...At least that made one of them.

“How are you feeling?” Clark asked him.

Lex frowned slightly and tilted his head. He wasn’t generally good with his feelings…

“You’re shivering a little bit again. Have you taken your temperature lately?” Clark elaborated.

Oh. “No, not lately,” Lex said, as he realized that he was leaning into Clark, likely because Clark was warm, and he was, in fact, shivering a little now. “I don’t feel that cold,” Lex told him.

“...Yet,” said Clark in reply, and Lex had to grimace in agreement. If he was still coughing, and starting to shiver again, then he wasn’t yet over this thing. “I’ll get the thermometer,” Clark informed him, as he slipped away and walked off, heading upstairs and taking his warm self with him.

Lex stifled a sigh.

He turned around to sit in his chair properly, and looked up to see both of Clark’s parents looking at him. And Martha had something of a frown on her face that was somewhat resembling the one she’d had before.

...Well, that wasn’t good. Lex looked off to the side quickly, at the refrigerator, hoping that removing eye contact would discourage Mrs. Kent from--

“Lex.”

\--talking to him. Drat. He could practically feel his stress levels rising with every heartbeat. This _wasn’t_ working!

Time for a slightly different strategy, then. He turned his head back to her, then turned his whole body so that he was facing her. He made sure he was sitting quite properly upright, then raised his arms to the table, folded his hands in front of him, and said, “...Yes?” while maintaining direct eye contact with her.

Mrs. Kent hesitated, as he knew she would. Everyone did when he did that.

He continued the eye contact with her, didn’t move a muscle, kept himself relaxed, as though he was perfectly comfortable with where he was and what he was doing and who he was talking to, projecting an air of complete and perfect calm. --It took effort; his body wanted to sway from side-to-side on him.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Mr. Kent shift slightly, as though uncomfortable, and move his head a little, as if he was looking between them.

The silence lengthened slightly, and Mrs. Kent slowly got a frown.

“Did you want something?” Lex asked her smoothly, inquisitively, just a bit before he gauged that Mrs. Kent would have formed the thought to ask him something. If he timed it right, it would break her thought process, and stall her for at least another second or two. He was feeling a bit lightheaded now at the effort, so he wasn’t entirely sure whether he was counting the seconds correctly...

But with the way her expression started slightly, it had worked. ...Well, that wasn’t _too_ surprising, though. He could generally do this sort of thing in his sleep; he used it on strangers and barely-acquaintances all the time, when he wanted to be left alone, and he didn’t mind coming off as a bit aloof or reserved. (...Or a tad bit cold, which is why he didn’t normally do it to people he cared about very often. ...Possibly because there had been so few of those in his life, the rare individual whom he wanted to hold him in good esteem, whose opinions mattered to him. He wouldn’t do this to Clark, to make leave him alone.)

(...no, if he wanted Clark to leave him alone, apparently he’d just blow up in his face, instead. Lex barely kept his expression smooth, the grimace off of his face.)

His delaying tactics were almost through, however, and their effectiveness run out. Clark’s mother had worked her way through several facial expressions, and was just opening her mouth to say, “Le--”

Lex felt free to stop listening at that point, though, because Clark was back with the thermometer and handing it to him. He turned towards Clark, pulling out of the unnaturally-held pose as Clark gave him a slightly-odd look, and smiled up at Clark as he took the thermometer from his friend and slid it into his mouth.

He turned back around in the chair and Clark went back to wrapping his arms around Lex’s shoulders from behind again. And with Clark’s reappearance, he was feeling better already.

Lex wasn’t entirely sure that the ‘sorry, were you saying something? can’t talk now!’ was appropriately expressed through his raised eyebrows and faint upturning of lips, as he relaxed backwards into Clark’s loose and very-warm embrace, but from the reappearance of Mrs. Kent’s frown, he had a feeling that the rough gist of it had come across, at least.

Lex raised his arms and loosely wrapped them around Clark’s own, casually hanging onto him with his hands, and got an odd look from Mr. Kent for his trouble. He wasn’t sure if the man looked more taken-aback, or _worried_.

“Clark…” Mr. Kent began, but he stalled out. He seemed to not know what to say, or maybe had too nebulous an idea of what to object there.

It belatedly occurred to Lex that the man’s general worry probably stemmed from Clark’s slightly atypical behavior, his physical closeness to Lex. ...And perhaps, Lex’s reciprocation of the closeness, as well. Neither of them generally let anyone within their respective personal spaces without an explicit invitation.

Which would make sense -- Clark’s father knew Clark, and he’d certainly seen Lex often enough to pick up on that about him. What Lex doubted though, was whether that knowledge was anything more than a subconscious-level understanding; he somewhat suspected that it had never been something the man had consciously realized.

Lex glanced over at Clark's mother, and got the feeling that the same could not be said for her. She looked like her hair was about to stand on end from the sheer wrongness of what she was seeing.

Lex couldn’t help but snort slightly and turn his head away from her. Small wonder Clark didn’t get that close to other people, if _that_ was his mother’s usual reaction, to something so simple as this...

“Time,” said Clark, and Lex pulled the thermometer out of his mouth and handed it up to him, as Clark disengaged his comfortable hold and straightened.

“How bad is it?” Lex said, letting go and turning in place to look up at him.

Clark held it down at his eye level. 105. It figured.

“Well, at least it’s not 106,” Lex sighed. He tossed his elbow over the back of the chair and looked at his forearm and hand. He was still shivering, even. He looked up at Clark.

“I guess I’ll go draw up another hot bath,” Clark told him with a slightly rueful smile that almost seemed pained, as he set down the thermometer on the kitchen table.

“...What?” Mrs. Kent said, sounding startled, as Clark began to turn away, presumably to go upstairs, and Clark stopped. “What’s his temperature?”

Clark told her.

“His temperature’s that high?” she said in rising tones.

He and Lex glanced back over their shoulders at his mother, then looked at each other.

They looked back at Clark’s mother.

“...Yes?” said Clark. He sounded about as sure about why he was being asked this as Lex was, which wasn’t very.

“Lex doesn’t just have a fever, it’s a high fever?” Mrs. Kent said.

“I guess?” said Clark, sounding unsure.

“How long has it been that high?” Mr. Kent asked abruptly, frowning at Lex and then his son.

“...Since last night,” Lex added slowly, dropping his elbow and glancing up at Clark. His temperature had hovered somewhere between 103 and 106 all night, generally on the higher side. He’d apparently retaken it a couple times when he’d half-woken up coughing once or twice after his initial freak out, after he’d laid down again.

Clark had frowned over his blurry memory the next morning -- that morning -- after he’d finished his soup-in-bed. Lex remembered his own freak-out perfectly well -- not that he’d referred to it that way to _Clark_ , not least of which because Clark had pointedly _not asked_. What Lex _hadn’t_ been able to recall, though, was what the changing sequence of numbers from his temperature-taking had been. Luckily, he’d had the foresight to write them down as and when he’d taken them, on a piece of paper that had occupied a very small ‘free’ corner of space on Clark’s nightstand, next to a pencil and the thermometer itself.

Clark listed off the times and temperatures for them, as Lex looked on.

What happened next was weird.

Mr. and Mrs. Kent both looked startled, and more than a little… alarmed? Clark’s mother actually took a step forward, towards them.

“Clark, you didn’t tell us that before!” Mrs. Kent exclaimed.

“You’ve been giving him _hot baths?_ ” Mr. Kent rattled off shortly thereafter, in tones of something like censure.

Lex shifted in his chair unsteadily, and Clark glanced between them.

“Yes?” Clark said in response to both of them, obviously not sure what the problem was.

“I’ve been feeling cold,” Lex put out there, almost hesitantly.

“He got chilled from walking out in the rain,” Clark told them, shifting from foot to foot into a wider stance, like he was trying to regain his balance. “Hot baths help with that.”

“When you’re actually chilled, Clark! When someone’s temperature is lower than normal,” Mrs. Kent interjected. “ _Not_ when they have a fever!”

“And you _don’t_ take hot baths just because you _think_ you feel cold,” Mr. Kent ended severely.

“...But shouldn’t I be trying to keep my temperature up?” Lex said, feeling more than a little confused as he looked between them, swaying from side to side. “To help burn the disease out of my system?” That _was_ what he was supposed to do, wasn’t it? Keep his temperature up when he had a fever?

He started feeling a little alarmed himself when both of Clark’s parents advanced on them.

“Not when you’re temperature’s that high,” Mr. Kent told him grimly, coming up on his left, as Mrs. Kent rounded the table on his right. Lex shoved his chair back, feeling uneasy.

“We need to get his temperature down, not up,” Mrs. Kent said rudely, talking about him in the third person... to Clark. “Draw up a _cold_ bath, not a hot one.”

_Wait, what?!_

That got Lex up out of his chair and onto his feet. And he nearly saw spots after -- black across his vision and a buzzing in his ears -- as he staggered back, away from them, and faintly heard Mrs. Kent say “Or maybe a shower,” before she stopped talking, as though a cold shower would be any better -- and Lex nearly lost his balance before he managed to stabilize himself after the third step, halted in place on the fourth.

“Luthor--” Mr. Kent rumbled at him, moving forward.

“--I’m fine,” Lex said quickly, taking another step back, away from him, halfway into the living room now. The elder male Kent reached for him, and Lex took another step back and sideways, keeping himself out of reach. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he repeated, because he did _not_ want a cold shower, or bath, or anything, he was already too cold as it was, shivering from it, shivered hard just thinking about it. No more cold. “Ev-everything’s fine, nothing’s wrong with me.” He shivered. Mrs. Kent came at him from his right and he stepped back and back again.

Lex swayed in place and pulled his arms in to his chest as he realized that both of Clark’s parents were hemming him in from either side. He did _not_ like that; that felt _wrong_. Lex started to step back again and then nearly lost his balance trying to check his motion, before remembering that the spaceship wasn’t in the living room anymore, it wasn’t behind him, and completed the motion anyway. Because nothing was behind him. Clark’s parents were in front of him. Clark was off to the side.

He wasn’t that far from the front door, was he? Maybe he could he make a dash for it?

“Lex, you need to get your temperature down,” Mrs. Kent told him, in a tone that seemed almost flat.

“No. I’m f-fine,” Lex insisted. “I’m too cold; I’m not hot. Really!” he said desperately, glancing between them. “I--”

He stumbled, his right knee buckled and he spun in place as he went down--

...and fell into Clark.

Lex blinked up at him stupidly, as Clark held him firmly by the arms, all but dragging him upright. _Clark was behind me?_ When had that happened?

“C-Clark, I--” Lex tried to calm down; he knew Clark wouldn’t hurt him -- he hadn’t last night. Clark was breathing slowly, calmly; he wasn’t. Lex realized that his own breathing was erratic, shallow; he tried to fix that by focusing on that first. He forcibly stopped his chest at the end of his next in-breath, paused and held it for a heartbeat, then breathed in further, far more deeply.

By the time he was finished his latest coughing jag, he was practically dangling from Clark’s grip, in Clark’s hold, and dazedly wondering why he’d done such a stupid thing. Deep breaths made him cough; he knew this...

“Clark, pick him up,” he heard one of Clark’s parents say, and he was turned sideways and felt solid warm steel under his thighs, and then the hand on his arm release just before another column of warm steel slid around behind his back. The lower pressure shifted upwards to settle under his knees, and then he was being held up against Clark’s chest.

Lex had no problem with this -- Clark wasn’t cold, Clark was **warm**. He closed his eyes and snuggled right in. Relaxed. Helpful Clark. -- _Safe_ Clark. Clark didn’t make him do things he didn’t want to do. Clark would keep him safe.

“Upstairs,” he heard, and there was motion. Lex didn’t care; bed was fine. He shouldn’t be going outside in this weather. Too cold. (...Why had he thought that before?)

He also heard Clark’s parents moving, but it didn’t sound like they were moving _towards_ him. Good.

They got upstairs. Lex blinked his eyes open and checked, when they stopped moving, standing at the top of the stairs. Clark didn’t set him down, though. Not that Lex minded.

He started dozing off, just hanging there in space. And Lex would have giggled hysterically if he weren’t already shivering so hard. Because alien/not-alien Clark was making him hang out in space with him.

After all, Earth was in space, too, wasn’t it?

His breathing evened out.

“Okay,” he heard, and he slitted open his eyes with a frown, because _that_ hadn’t sounded like Clark. He tilted his head, “Now,” because there was almost a weird echo, like you heard in a--

Clark lowered him straight down into hell-frozen-over.

Lex let out a _scream_ , then reflexively clamped his mouth shut as the water closed over his head, though bubbles still streamed through his gritted teeth as he lashed out with feet, then legs and forearms, as he tried to get out, scream his distress, get his breathing under control -- no, _hold his breath_ , god, fuck -- he slammed his wrists against Clark’s arms, that were barring the way to the surface -- _why wouldn’t he let him out?!?_

Lex kept thrashing, and Clark didn’t actually have a good hold on him, wasn’t actually _holding him_ \-- so Lex squirmed around enough to get his head above water at the head of the tub and curse his so-called ‘friend’s _ears_ blue as he shivered and shuddered, and froze as his shivers became shudders, and kicked his foot out against the faucet as hard as he could in pure spite.

He cursed, and spat, and his fingers tore at Clark’s arms across his chest, right up until he heard, “Again,” and Clark shoved his arms down, and Lex went under again.

Lex screamed all his air out underwater at the offense, and thrashed even harder when his throat closed up out of reflex of self-preservation and he choked on lack of air.

He was limp when Clark pulled him up this time, gasped in hard and coughed until he saw stars, until he couldn’t feel his body anymore and all that existed were his lungs and the pain, and by the time he was done and the coughing had stopped he was reeling and wrung out and about ready to try _pleading_ when he was shoved under the surface again.

He managed to mostly hold his breath that time. He felt his body spasm, again and again. He wasn’t even trying to get out of the freezing-cold water anymore, he knew he couldn’t; he just let his body discoordinately go at it, anyway.

It was about the point that he felt Clark starting to pull him out again that it happened. It was like a switch flipped over in his brain, and the world inverted on him dramatically. The water was suddenly _blessedly_ cool.

**He was burning up.**

He could _feel_ his mind clearing rapidly. Or beginning to clear. It was like he’d been trying to think through a steamy fog. It was now starting to dissipate, but he needed it to go faster.

One thing already stood out with crystal clarity, though: he was too hot.

His head broke the surface, and Lex hissed at the temperature differential, shoved at Clark’s arms hard, and fell back under, sank and hit the bottom of the porcelain tub hard.

He was on fire, hot, **too hot** , and he needed to get that _out_.

He also had next to no breath in his lungs.

He felt hands grab his shoulders, and start to pull him up. Lex immediately grabbed Clark’s hands with his own and pulled at them, kicked his own feet against the sides of the tub to try and get some leverage to _stay down_ \-- jesus, Clark -- _let go_.

He met Clark’s eyes through the water. He felt the motion halt.

He needed to stay under as long as possible. He trusted Clark to do that for him.

He tried to let himself go limp in Clark’s arms. He felt Clark readjust his hold.

He was held like that, barely under the surface, his body steaming off heat into the surrounding water, for he wasn’t sure how long, he felt his lungs spasming and fought it, and when he was about to suffocate on his own last bit of held breath and his head jerked upward without conscious thought, seeking air, Clark pulled him out again.

His head was above the surface, and he was struggling to get enough air in -- quickly, so he could get back down -- not too quickly, so he didn’t start coughing again -- and stay above the surface only so far enough that he could breathe, with as much of himself still-submerged as possible. The air wasn’t helping him nearly as much as the water surrounding him was.

“Ice,” he managed to croak out after awhile, once his brain wasn’t quite so oxygen-starved anymore. The bath wasn’t cold enough; he was going to burn to ash first, his body a runaway furnace. “Need ice--”

The most exquisite sensation of cold dropped right down onto his forehead, and Lex’s shoulders and arms -- the only thing really holding him upright just then -- lost their tension so quickly, he found himself breathing out dizzy relief into the bathwater before Clark got his hands under his shoulderblades and lifted him back up again. Luckily, Clark was timely enough to keep him from stupidly drowning himself on the reflexive in-breath.

Clark held him up so that his head tilted far back almost over the edge of the tub, Clark eyes were full of concern as he reapplied the compress and made sure that that glorious cold stayed on his head.

Lex’s eyes rolled back into his skull, and he felt a smile try to crawl across his face. It got caught midway as the sensation of the skin of his flushed face radiating heat out into the air of the room reasserted itself in his mind. It fell shortly thereafter when the rest of his body, and the heat of it, registered again, uncomfortably. He was caught between two extremes, and it did **not** feel good.

He felt odd tugs farther down his body, and when the cool water somehow felt a little colder around his legs and chest and arms, and his movements slightly less weighed down, he belatedly realized that his pajamas were gone, he was no longer wearing them.

He was still shivering, still shuddering from time to time, while mostly submerged in cool water, but it was his body trying to give off the heat, not warm itself further, Lex was almost sure of it.

“Think his fever’s broken,” he heard someone say, and he realized it was Clark’s father.

“I don’t feel cold anymore,” Lex slurred out, batting at the water haphazardly with one hand, except… he didn’t. Sound slurred. He wasn’t sure why he’d expected himself to. Maybe because his tongue felt slightly too heavy and bloated in his mouth.

The… washcloth?... full of ice cubes was taken away from his forehead, and replaced with a much cooler one. He hadn’t realized it had warmed that much.

He felt tears, or maybe just water from the melting cold-compress across his forehead, trickle down the sides of his face. He didn’t particularly care which.

He breathed in, and let out a sound that wasn’t a whimper, but was definitely one that he’d never made before.

Suddenly, he felt a chill at his lips. His head jerked back, his jaw dropping slightly in shock, and the next thing he knew he had ice in his mouth and, oh. oh. It was _glorious_. It felt just so _good_ , too. A trickle went down the back of his throat. He shivered slightly at the sensation, eyes closed.

He rattled the bit of ice around his too-hot mouth, nicking it against this teeth. He sucked on it, closed-mouthed, and he shivered again, hard. He let it lay on his tongue awhile, breathing around it, until it was gone.

He sighed out sadly, and then he got another ice chip.

He got two more ice cube-chips before they stopped coming, and then he had to lose the cold-compress for a bit and blink his eyes open as he was coaxed upright, sat up to drink water from a cup.

The water was lukewarm, almost tepid, and he grimaced at it.

“How do you feel?” he was asked, as he handed the cup back.

“Dizzy,” he said. “A little.”

“Still warm?” A hand -- back of a hand -- flashed across his vision, and he didn’t even have a chance to startle, let alone flinch away from it, before it was pressed gently against his forehead.

“Stop mothering at me,” he complained to Mrs. Kent, reaching up and shoving away her hand in pure irritation.

“Why?”

“Because it’s not real!” he spat out, not looking at her, then clenched his teeth as his head throbbed. He lifted his own hand to press against it, breathing unsteadily. He felt sweat bead on his face, and slide down his jawline.

She didn’t say anything, and after awhile Lex let his hand drop, his arm fall back into the water with a hard splash. Then he thought the better of that and cursed himself under his breath for his own idiocy -- of course his head was pounding, he was overheated, still. He raised his hands to the sides of the tub while he turned his head from side to side, scanning the immediate area, eyes searching for the ice-compress so he could reapply it again.

Clark mother handed it to him without a word, and he didn’t let himself hesitate before he took it from her.

He held it on top of his head.

They sat there, Lex staring down at the water, Mrs. Kent staring at _him_ , until Lex got fed up and decided to stare at her right back. Or, rather...

Lex was fairly sure that he was glaring at her, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he cared one way or the other about how rude he was being.

“Where’s Clark?” he said finally. Both Clark and Jonathan were absent from the room at-present, and he was fairly sure that they’d all been there before, that Jonathan had actually been the one to undress him. Martha had been the one feeding him ice chips.

Clark had been holding him, keeping him from drowning or hurting himself.

“He needed to help Jonathan with something,” Mrs. Kent told him with annoying vagueness.

Another long pause.

“I nearly killed myself, didn’t I,” Lex said coldly, shivering for a moment -- it was only happening intermittently now. He still felt far too warm. “Two degrees warmer…” _and the proteins in my brain would’ve started to unravel, among other things._ 107 degrees Fahrenheit was the magic number, and while the body generally had feedback mechanisms to prevent the temperature from going that high, actively heating it externally -- via, say, hot water in a bath -- could push it above that number, easily.

He knew this. Body temperatures of 104 to 105 and above generally impaired immune system response. Body temperatures above 107F were absolutely unsafe. Fevers generally were self-limiting, stopped increasing before they hit 107. External sources could push the body’s temperature higher, hotter, faster than the body could shed or deal with the excess heat. ...He felt cold, and a warm bath would make him feel better almost immediately. Sitting in a warm bath would raise his temperature. He'd had a temperature of 105. He knew all this, but he hadn’t made the obvious connection between those facts. He really hadn’t been thinking clearly.

He took in a breath, slowly, and let it out again.

“Honestly, Lex, I was more worried about you thinking you felt cold when you weren’t,” Mrs. Kent told him. “When your body hits a new setpoint like that, especially when you’re sick, and it’s _that high_ , it’s not good.”

Lex winced slightly, and looked away. “I haven’t gotten sick much,” he put out there, then winced again. He was saying all sorts of inane things lately, wasn’t he.

“Lex…” She let out a sigh.

“How long should I stay in here?” Lex asked, looking down at the water he was sitting in. At least he was still wearing… _someone’s_... boxers, even if the borrowed flannel pajamas were now absent. “Should I wait until it’s room temperature?”

There was a pause. “It is room temperature,” he was told.

Lex tilted his head back and frowned up at her. “What?” He hesitated. “...How long have I been in here?”

“A little over half an hour.”

Lex’s frown deepened. “What temperature was the water when you put me in it?” he asked of her, as he slowly lowered the ice-compress from his head.

“Room temperature.”

He stared up at her, dismayed.

“If we’d made it any colder, it would have shocked your system,” she told him.

“I’ve been sitting here in lukewarm water _this entire time?_ ”

“Well, we did add some cooler water to it after you stopped fighting us. And gave you the ice.” She made a gesture at the compress he was holding.

Right. As if that made it any better. ...Well, except it sort-of had, so maybe it did. Lex pulled a face, then rubbed a hand across his face like he wanted to scrub his own expression off.

“I’d say we give it another few minutes, then dry you off and get you back into bed,” Mrs. Kent told him.

...Lex couldn’t exactly argue with her.

~*~*~*~*~*~


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: This was written up last Thursday, but has required extensive edits, re-edits, and even more edits, hence the delay. (In other words, don’t expect a fast update after this.)
> 
> Just gonna remind people here that this is written in third-person-limited POV, and that Lex is not omniscient, or even necessarily drawing the correct inferences, about many of the things that are going on here…
> 
> (Yes, you will get to see the flip side of things a bit later. For now, you get to enjoy a bit more of Lex’s confusion ;)

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was tucked into Clark’s bed again, feeling a bit too warm to be comfortable in his own skin, under the covers and in yet another set of underwear and flannel, but also armed with a new ice-compress across his forehead and a towel over the pillow.

He’d by and large pretty much given up on leaving the house until Mrs. Kent kicked him out when he was better. --Not felt better. _Was_ better. And Lex wasn’t about to complain about that. He already felt -- and _was_ \-- objectively less ill than he had been before now, even if he wasn’t quite ‘well’ again yet. The elder Kents obviously knew what they were doing; he wasn’t so sure his staff did. Or if they would worry enough to check up on him, which was a different sort of (non-)problem itself.

...Though this did mean that Clark was no longer on mother-henning duty, and Lex hoped that none of them had to be apologetic about that. Clark had tried his best. He obviously didn’t know much more (or less) about treating someone when they were ill than Lex did himself; Lex could hardly hold that against him. And Clark had even been right about most of it... when it likely didn’t even apply to him. Because, heck, maybe aliens had different symptoms than humans when they got sick. (For all Lex knew, they might experience a temperature drop instead of a fever, or -- conversely -- get a much _higher_ fever than humans, instead.)

In fact, it had been Lex’s own input on the matter that had seemed to be what had tripped Clark up -- feeling cold and chilled when in actuality he’d been feverish.

The only thing Lex could really complain about was being taken care of, which tended to spike his anxiety levels even on a good day. He didn’t like it all that much when random people started paying attention to **him** _specifically_ too closely, for too long, rather than just treating him like a Luthor, because (as he’d told Clark the day prior) that ran the risk of someone actually _knowing_ him... and in his experience that usually meant nothing good for him. And after this unexpected and unwanted bout of illness, he’d now also come to the ‘fun’ conclusion that he liked it even less when someone’s mother-henning started looking too much like mothering in general -- and he felt perfectly justified in feeling that way about it for what he felt were even more obvious reasons. (And who the hell would want him, anyway? Let alone the _why_ of it.) Besides, it wasn’t like he was trying to replace his dead mother. That was all.

He was sweating slightly, and he dozed somewhat fitfully. He’d wanted to sleep without the pajamas on, but Mrs. Kent had insisted. Combined with the blankets and sheets, it left him significantly warmer than he would have been otherwise. To counteract it, he had to lie on his back so that the cold-compress could cover the most surface area effectively -- his forehead.

The problem was, Lex was used to sleeping on his side. So when he inevitably rolled over while he was half-asleep, the compress slipped off of him onto the pillow, and he woke up shortly thereafter from the discomfort of his own feverish state, grumbling and having to try and resituate everything again. (And he knew he hadn’t been asleep for very long, because the ice cubes in the cold compress never seemed to have melted much more than what he remembered the state of it to have been when he’d last resituated it back onto his forehead, whenever he woke up on his side.)

After about the fifth time that he’d woken up because he’d rolled over and lost the ice-compress _yet again_ , he finally tried _starting out_ on his side and balancing the compress across the side of his head. It didn’t exactly feel right, and he felt almost too uncomfortable to even lie still with that little relief from his body’s own heat, but the next time he (...eventually…) fell back asleep, he finally stayed asleep.

He woke up again to the heavy thudding of boots up the stairs, and sighed to himself. He cracked opened his eyes slowly, and reflected on the fact that at least he wasn’t waking up confused as to where he was this time around. That was an improvement overall.

He considered bracing himself, but settled on just looking over at the door without otherwise moving -- _screw it_ \-- which swung open to reveal one Jonathan Kent.

He was carrying a large tray of… something. And... he wasn’t yelling.

Lex blinked, frowning, and slowly levered himself up as Mr. Kent walked in. His limbs felt weighted down, which was odd, because nothing he was wearing or tucked under was all that heavy.

Mr. Kent circumnavigated the clothing piles on the floor, then hooked a foot around an incongruously-clear chair -- where had _that_ come from? -- and pulled it over closer to the bed. He set the tray down on it. Orange juice, a glass of water, a bowl with ice in it, another washcloth, the thermometer, and another bowl -- a monstrously big bowl -- of soup with a large spoon -- it looked (and smelled) like vegetable soup this time.

“Looks like you’re flushed,” Clark’s father informed him.

Lex made a face and rubbed fingers across his too-warm forehead, before dropping his hand down to the bed again. He certainly _felt_ flushed; he wouldn’t be at all surprised. “Yes,” he agreed dourly.

“And you’re not shivering anymore.”

Lex made a noncommittal sound.

Jonathan fixed his eyes on him. “That’s a good thing, Luthor. It means your fever’s going down.”

Oh.

Jonathan picked up the thermometer and held it out to him.

Lex eyed it -- it looked like the same one as before -- then looked up at Jonathan, wondering if he’d done something to it.

Lex shifted in place, then reached up and took it from him.

Jonathan handed it over.

Lex opted to take the previously-used compress-washcloth from his pillow and use it to wipe down the thermometer first, before shaking the old mercury thermometer out to ‘clear’ the reading. _Then_ he stuck it in his mouth.

Jonathan snorted at this procedure, crossing his arms. Then he flipped over his left wrist, to look down at his watch, and waited.

Lex sat back in bed.

After about a minute, Jonathan made a gesture, and Lex pulled it out of his mouth again.

“101.5,” Lex reported, handing it over. He still had a ways to go.

Jonathan looked down at it himself, then nodded once, almost absently, before he shook it out again.

He set it back down on the tray, then lifted it up and set the tray down over Lex’s blanket-covered legs.

Then he sat down in the chair.

‘Great,’ thought Lex. ‘I have an audience.’ ...Well, when had he not? When he had been living in Metropolis, all eyes had been on him. So why should he care about a single pair of eyes, now? Having decided to more-or-less ignore Jonathan Kent’s presence for the interim, Lex picked up the only utensil on the tray and started spooning soup into his mouth from the monstrously big bowl.

It _was_ vegetable soup, and it was fresh. At the first spoonful, Lex closed his eyes and let out a sigh and felt his shoulders drop.

“We ran out of chicken soup, so Martha used ‘your’ vegetables,” he was informed. Jonathan sounded almost amused.

“Mmhm.” Lex didn’t exactly care; the broth tasted wonderful, even if it was warm, and he already uncomfortably-so. Fresh tomato base, and cut carrots and onions and peas, green beans too, with just the right amount of pepper...

He was hungry, and he ate it all.

He let out another soft sigh when he was done, and set down his spoon.

“There’s more soup downstairs if you want it,” Jonathan told him.

“Maybe later,” Lex murmured.

“Drink the juice,” he was reminded, and Lex did so. Through lowered lids, he watched Jonathan move the glass of water off of the tray, to set it on the single small clear spot on the corner of the nightstand, presumably for him to have later, then take the bowl of ice and the washcloth from the tray.

By the time Lex had finished the juice, Jonathan had finished putting the new cold-compress together. He set down the empty glass and took the compress when Jonathan handed it over to him.

As Lex slid back down in bed, he felt the lightened tray removed from his lower body. Lex placed the ice over his forehead. His eyes fluttered closed.

He was out before the door even closed.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex woke up on his back this time, which was an odd new experience for him. He couldn’t really remember the last time he had done that. And after all the tossing and turning he’d done in his sleep earlier, well...

He blinked his eyes open and stared at the ceiling, remembering. He tilted his head back slightly and to the side, and saw the glass of water on the nightstand. ...So, he hadn’t just imagined it.

It hadn’t occurred to him to question it before, but now he was starting to wonder: why exactly had Jonathan Kent treated him like a human being? ...Hell, why had he been the one to even bring up the tray in the first place? That seemed more like something Clark would do.

Lex frowned.

And he wasn’t entirely sure what to think when he realized that he may not have even thanked the man for his efforts. He’d murmured something or another to Jonathan’s retreating back as he’d left, but he’d been a little out of it from the instant relief of the ice; he couldn’t remember what he’d actually said to him, or if Jonathan had even replied. He was fairly sure Jonathan had still been in the room at that point...

Well, it was likely too late for a ‘thank you’, now -- and, oddly, the presence or absence of manners hadn’t seemed to impact Mr. Kent’s behavior, either way -- and asking after an explanation was likely more trouble than it was worth. Probably better to just let the oddness lie.

Lex sighed, then grimaced slightly, before reaching up and feeling around for the washcloth-compress. It had slid backwards off of his head at some point, the ice melted into a lukewarm soggy nothing.

He let his arms sag for a moment above his head, as he closed his eyes and took stock of himself, and realized that he… didn’t feel so bad.

He sat up slowly.

His breathing felt a little more… full. He reached up and rubbed at the light trails of dried sweat that had left tracks down the sides of his forehead.

He reached over carefully and picked up the glass of water. He drank it all down, knowing he needed to rehydrate himself; the flannel pajamas he was wearing were almost damp with sweat. Once he’d finished drinking it, he put the glass back.

He got up slowly, and his knees didn’t try to give out on him. That was good. He made his way out the door and down the hallway, into the bathroom.

He took no chances. He closed the door and _sat down_ to relieve himself, then got up and washed his hands and then his face before looking up into the mirror.

He checked his reflection, his face for any remaining bruises, but all that seemed to be left now was the faintest discoloration, down along the side of his jaw. He could barely see it, even knowing where he needed to look for it. _Good._ He let out a sigh of relief.

Maybe Martha would talk herself out of what she’d seen earlier, talk herself down to believing it was only something she’d ‘thought’ she’d seen. He’d had that happen before.

The bruise on the back of his skull from his backwards header onto the concrete floor was another thing, though. He couldn’t tell what it looked like with only the one mirror, and it likely wasn’t completely gone yet, but that had been his own damn fault. The difference there was, that was something people would laugh at and that he could wave off, call it stupidity or simply misadventure, and that would be the end of it.

He didn’t bother with trying to check anything that was hidden away under the pajamas. If they were already covered up, then he’d just be covering them up again, anyway.

The half-dried sweat that had soaked into the flannel was starting to feel a bit nasty, though, now that he wasn’t under the warm covers of the bed and the dampness had begun to cool. He almost stripped it all off on the spot to shove himself into the bathtub for a shower, but he stopped when he remembered how badly he’d still been misgauging temperature at the end of his earlier dunking. Washing his face was one thing -- that wouldn’t impact his body teperature much overall -- but taking an _actual shower?_ He really needed to get someone else to set the temperature of the spray for him, or risk further trouble.

He let out a sigh of frustration, and pushed off of the sink counter. He made his way out of the bathroom and down the stairs, using the railing just in case he needed it.

The kitchen was full of Kents.

“Hungry?” he was asked by the mother in the room. She was setting out what looked like lunch on the kitchen table. The boys were already seated around her.

“I’d rather take a shower first," Lex told her with a self-deprecating grimace. “Please,” he added belatedly.

Mrs. Kent looked to Jonathan -- not Clark -- and her husband seemed to stifle a sigh as he got himself up from his seat to go upstairs.

Lex glanced over at Clark, but his friend just gave him a rueful smile from his own chair and ticked his eyes over to his father, then back to Lex.

Feeling unsure, Lex followed Mr. Kent back upstairs.

Mr. Kent was fiddling with the knobs already by the time Lex had made his way back into the bathroom himself. He only stood there awkwardly for a few seconds before Mr. Kent pushed off his knees and back upright with a faint grunt, and walked past him out of the room.

Lex turned.

“Towels are over there,” came a gesture, “Clothes are on the back of the toilet,” he was told, and then the door shut.

Lex blinked at the door. He heard Jonathan’s footsteps clomp back down the stairs.

...Well. Okay, then.

Lex stripped and got down to it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex _still_ really didn’t want to know whose boxers he was wearing, but he was beginning to suspect he knew.

This time he hadn’t gotten pajamas, though -- he’d gotten blue jeans and a t-shirt to wear. A dark black one, one with no collar and half-sleeves. It wasn’t exactly stylish, but it wasn’t _not_ stylish, either. It looked like it hadn’t been worn a lot, if at all ever.

He had to frown a little over two things, there. One, that the clothing had already been in the bathroom from when he’d been in there just before that, handling his business, so they’d been expecting his request -- he’d just noted the pile of cloth in passing at the time, and hadn’t thought anything of it because he hadn’t realized that it had been clothing set out for him. And two, the t-shirt showed a significant portion of his arms -- his forearms, to be precise -- to full-view.

It was hard to see the bruises still remaining on his left arm -- from where he’d banged it on the porch swing and then the kitchen chair last night, respectively -- but they _were_ there still, and visible, on the underside of his arm, even if they were almost gone. Lex grimaced -- he had a feeling that a certain someone had not had any input on these particular clothes that were picked out for him, since Clark knew his preferences on clothing, long-sleeves in particular -- but there was nothing he could do about it, other than to try not to turn his back on Mrs. Kent for the rest of the day. His presence and care here was under the whim of the Kent elders, at present.

Lex made his way back downstairs, stopping off along the way only to leave the bundle of pajamas in Clark’s room, draped over his near-to-overflowing hamper. When he reached the kitchen again, the Kents were still at it with their eating.

Clark glanced over as he approached the table, and it was clear that he noted the oddness of the t-shirt sleeve length -- not short, not long -- but he didn’t say anything. He just got back to the food on his plate.

Lex eased his way down onto the only free chair at the kitchen table, the one with the back to the living room -- it seemed to be quickly becoming his designated chair when he was here, if both last night and this morning also counted -- and Mrs. Kent promptly got up from her seat and in short order set down another monster bowl of soup in front of him.

He looked up and over, at the enormous steel stock pot sitting on the stove burner that she’d ladled the soup out of, and had to ask, “Did you use _all_ the vegetables to make this soup?” A soup would keep for awhile, quite probably longer than the power would remain out in the house, since it could be reheated over and over again, or just kept at a low simmer with water added occasionally -- if worst came to worst, he likely wouldn’t have to eat it all himself. If she had used all of them in the soup’s making, then she’d just made his life a lot easier, in terms of reducing his designated eating duties in preventing waste-by-spoilage.

From the thin, slight smile he got from Mrs. Kent, he suspected the answer to his question was 'yes’.

“Thank you,” he murmured belatedly, as Mrs. Kent sat back down.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and he almost started in place. He hadn’t really expected a response.

It was quiet; none of them talked as they ate.

He finished his soup, and he finished the lukewarm milk in the glass that was sitting in front of him, and he wondered, as he tried to sit still and remember his manners and **not** squirm in place, if silence could be passive-aggressive somehow.

Nobody was looking at him. ...No, that wasn’t quite true -- Clark glanced up at him again for a moment and gave him a smile, before taking another bite off his plate.

Lex tried to relax. But he just felt tense.

“Should I… go back upstairs?” he tried, attempting to test out the waters carefully, with some caution.

“You can lie down on the couch for awhile, if you want,” he was told by Mrs. Kent, somewhat breezily.

Lex stared at her, trying to figure this out. And he couldn’t. He didn’t know what she was getting at. Did she want him to leave the table, or not? To go upstairs, or to stay?

This was… _ridiculous_. He had that old sinking feeling in his stomach, in his chest; he felt like he was in _trouble_ for something. But he hadn’t **done** anything. And they weren’t doing anything either. He was at a loss. ...Should he apologize? But for _what?_

...Was he supposed to say something about the shirt? She’d been after him about his bruises before, earlier. But she hadn’t said anything upstairs, when they’d been alone in the bathroom, and him in the tub, with nearly everything on full-display; he’d been down to a soggy pair of boxers at that point. He was near-certain that she must have been the one to pick out the shirt for him that he was currently wearing. But he hardly wanted to be the one to open up that conversation again, if he could help it...

Lex opened his mouth, then closed it again. He had no idea what she was thinking. The only thing that was obvious was that she was hiding strong emotion of some sort. ...Was she angry about something? Something else? But anything he could think of that he’d done or been responsible for was something that he’d already apologized for and tried to make right with them. He didn’t know what to do, what else he _could_ do.

...Or was he supposed to do something else completely? Had he misunderstood her earlier and, now that his fever was down, should be giving his thank-you’s and goodbyes and just leave? But if he was wrong about that, then she’d likely get offended with him, and he didn’t want to risk that--

“Lex, go lie down on the couch,” he was told by Mr. Kent in tones that were either frustrated or slightly exasperated -- Lex wasn’t sure which. At least it was clear though; he didn’t have to guess at what _Jonathan_ had wanted or meant.

Lex slowly got up, carefully shoved his chair in, then hesitated for a moment before reaching for the dishes--

“I’ve got it,” Clark told him, reaching out in front of him and picking them up from Lex’s place setting before Lex could.

\--and he pulled back slowly as Clark cleaned up for him, taking his dishes over to the sink for him, leaving Lex feeling a little lost.

There wasn’t anything for him to do, except...

Lex turned and walked away. Out of the kitchen and into the living room. He sat down on the couch.

There was a blanket thrown over the back of it, and a pillow already at one end.

Lex pulled up his feet and turned himself sideways. He grabbed the blanket and flopped it down over himself, curled up under it completely and tried not to think too hard about what all he was missing in what was and wasn’t being said.

He was never going to complain to Clark about the complexity of Luthor family dynamics ever again.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex grumbled, rolled over, and nearly fell off the couch at the noise that woke him up.

Well, maybe not _nearly_ \-- it was just his left arm that had fallen over the side, not the rest of him. The rest of him had stayed put. He was face-down in something atypically fluffy, though.

He groaned a little and lifted his face up from the down-filled pillow, staring blearily around. He felt awful. ...Probably in no small part because he’d been sleeping all day. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept this much. ...Or been sick. He really shouldn’t discount the effects of that either, he was beginning to realize. Frankly, he didn’t know how people put up with it. Didn’t most people get sick at least once a year, or more?

He sighed as he faceplanted into the pillow again and tried not to think about that. Because, getting sick more often than this? He’d likely give himself nightmares of some sort.

He belatedly realized that the sound that had woken him up had likely been a loud knocking at the front door when it started up again, and he saw more than heard someone move by him before he heard the door open.

He gritted down a grumble -- he wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep with a visitor inbound and a conversation going on in the same room -- but took his time shoving himself upright to a seated posture, then slumped slightly against the back of the couch. He blinked as he heard loud, higher-pitched voices. Was that Chloe... and Lana? He frowned slightly, as he looked over the back of the couch, to see Clark letting them in.

“Clark, I need to talk to you about--” Chloe began, rapid-fire, up until she walked into the living room and came to a halt, staring at Lex over the back of the couch. “-- _You_ ,” she said with toxic tones of venom, and moved towards him.

Lex had no idea what was happening, until he saw her raise her hand in a fist.

He shoved himself backwards out of reflex, off of the front of the couch. She swung at him over the back of the couch, and missed his face. His back, however, did not miss the side of the sturdy wooden coffee table behind him.

He ended up half sprawled-out on the coffee table, half-seated on the floor, and the table had shifted a good two feet towards the fireplace in his slip-and-fall. ...Which was lucky, because if it had been any closer, he’d’ve hit it at a very bad angle.

“What are you doing!!” he heard Mrs. Kent demand, as she rushed out of the kitchen and into the living room.

Lex barely stifled a flinch. He pretended to ignore her for the moment as he methodically, carefully pushed himself sideways, the rest of the way off of the table and down onto the floor completely, and as he moved he clenched his jaw and strangled the half-whimper, half-pained hiss down in the base of his throat before it escaped to become any sort of audible noise.

“Lex, are you all right?” Mrs. Kent asked of him, as she knelt down next to him.

Startled, Lex looked up at her briefly -- wait, she _wasn’t_ angry with him? -- then he glanced over at Chloe -- who Clark was keeping where she stood with a restraining hand on her arm -- to make sure she wasn’t getting any closer to him, before he looked up at Mrs. Kent again.

“I’m fine,” he told her, hoping he didn’t sound as strained as he felt just then. “I, ah, I hope I didn’t damage your table,” he apologized preemptively, as he put a hand on it to prop himself a little more upright, hiding a grimace as he looked the table over. It didn’t _look_ like he’d broken it, at least. Small mercies. If it had been plastic, he likely would have, though.

He looked back to Mrs. Kent and realized that she had something like a dumbfounded look on her face. She smoothed it away quickly, though.

With no further queries coming from either of the two Kents in the house at-present, Lex turned a little in place and looked up at the teenagers.

Both Clark and Lana looked about as surprised at Chloe’s outburst as he’d felt about it, so there was that, at least.

“Miss Sullivan,” Lex began calmly.

“Don’t _you_ ‘Miss Sullivan’ me, you--” Chloe began angrily, straining forward in Clark’s grasp.

“ _Chloe Anne Sullivan!_ ” he heard Clark’s mother yell at her, as she shoved herself to her feet.

Lex couldn’t help but get a small smile. _Chloe_ was in _trouble_. And here he’d thought that he would have to be the one to say something disparaging. Instead, he pulled a leg up to his chest, fully-content to sit back and watch as Mrs. Kent handled it for him. ...And, the icing on the cake was, he knew that Mrs. Kent could never, ever yell at _him_ like that, because _she_ didn’t know his middle--

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking, Alexander Joseph,” she told him in measured tones, while not even looking at him. Chloe, meanwhile, was squirming under her gaze.

Lex stared up at her in disbelief, the smile sliding right off of his face.

Then he dropped his gaze to glare at Clark, because he knew exactly who had to have told her.

Clark gave him a rueful sort of ‘sorry’ smile, which didn’t exactly help matters. An apology wouldn’t make Clark’s mother un-know Lex’s middle name. And it wasn’t like she was liable to forget it, either -- not when her adopted (...alien...) son had the _same middle name!_

“Chloe, what on _earth_ did you think you were doing!” Clark’s mother scolded her.

That seemed to be open-ended enough to release the floodgates -- or, well, the rabid wolves, in Chloe’s case. She didn’t exactly seem to be one for waterworks.

“Do you have _any_ idea what _that jerk_ did!” Chloe all-but-yelled out in increasingly shrill tones. “I can’t believe that you’re helping him!”

“What?” said Clark, sounding about as confused as his mother looked just then.

“You’re hiding him here,” Chloe stated like it was a crime. “So nobody can find him. Covering for him so he doesn’t have to go into work today. Pretending he’s sick.”

“...I am sick,” Lex told her, feeling uncomfortable about admitting it, and Chloe rounded on him almost immediately.

“You’re not sick!” she scoffed at him. “You don’t _get_ sick!” And, while he was still reeling from the fact that _she knew that_ , that before last night-- how in the _hell_ did she--?! “You just used a stupid excuse to play hooky from the plant today and, you know what? I guess the other rumor was right, _it didn’t work_ ,” she sneered at him.

Before Lex could respond, Clark said, “What rumor?”

“That he got fired from the plant,” Chloe told them. “ _I_ thought that he’d actually quit,” she began, to Lex’s feeling of growing outrage, “and left everybody in the lurch. --But I guess not,” Chloe said, rounding on him again. “I guess your old man knew you were lying,” she said nastily, “and _you_ **deserve** it. _But my father and everybody else sure as hell didn’t,_ ” she ground out with a growing rage.

Clark looked a little pale, and Martha was frowning -- at Chloe, not at him.

“Mi--” Lex shook his head. “ _Chloe_ ,” he tried, frowning up at her. “I don’t know what rumors you’ve heard,” he said, as he pushed himself to his feet, “but my father can’t fire someone for taking a sick day.” Chloe stared at him in disbelief. For one thing... “It’s against the law,” he informed her, and he had to stop talking when she started laughing hysterically.

He glanced over at Mrs. Kent, feeling concerned. And he wasn’t the only one who felt that way -- Lana put a comforting hand on her friend’s shoulder, and she was frowning, too.

When Chloe had finally calmed down somewhat, the next words out of her mouth were not what he had expected. “Like that matters,” she said bitterly.

“I don’t need a doctor’s note to take a day off of work,” Lex said, with a growing feeling of unease in his gut.

“Well, then good luck in court, trying to get your job back, then,” Chloe said almost snidely, with a snort.

Lex pinched the bridge of his nose, reached for patience, then tried again, because there was a larger issue here, even he did have the day off as sick leave. “Chloe, if there’s something going on at the plant that I should know about--”

“‘Something going on’!?” she exclaimed, and now she simply sounded hysterical. “My father _lost his job_ because _you lied_ and--!”

“--Chloe!” Mrs. Kent scolded, coming around the side of the couch to her, and Clark moved away from her to give them room. Chloe flinched and stopped, and the girl now had tears in her eyes.

“What are you talking about?” Lex said, because Gabe had lost his job?! “My father _fired--?!_ ” His breath choked off for a moment, because that couldn’t be possible -- Gabe was just about the only reason the plant was still standing, and halfway fiscally-solvent. Lionel wasn’t _stupid_ , he couldn’t just _fire--!!_

Lex was about to demand answers out of her, but stopped and clamped his mouth shut when Mrs. Kent held up a hand.

“Chloe,” Clark’s mother said, addressing her directly. “Lex _has_ been sick. He’s been coughing, and tired, and he had a fever of 105 not three hours ago. He’s been sleeping nearly all day.”

“No,” Chloe said, shaking her head. “No, he doesn’t get sick.” She half-turned towards Lex. “You--”

“ _Chloe_ ,” Clark’s mother said, laying a hand on her shoulder, and she pulled away from her.

“--You didn’t even answer your phone!” Chloe told him accusatorily.

“It was waterlogged,” was all Lex could say.

“How did you _waterlog_ your _phone_ ,” Chloe said, as if it wasn’t possible for that to happen accidentally. Then her eyes glittered. “And where did you put your car. It wasn’t outside in the driveway.”

Christ. Not this, please. Not now.

“Lex’s car broke down on the way home, driving me here,” Clark said. “Some kind of electrical problem. We had to walk halfway from town in the rain. We were both soaked by the time we got back. That’s how Lex got sick, and his phone got wet.”

Lex made a note to never, ever think that Clark was a horrible liar again. He wasn’t even sure how Clark had known about…

...no, actually, that made sense. Clark had likely seen his car parked there with the top down when he’d left the Talon. He wouldn’t have wanted to walk by the windows in front if he’d wanted to avoid his friends, so he would have had to have gone right by his car on the way home.

“Then why aren’t _you_ sick,” Chloe demanded of Clark.

“Because he’s used to getting caught in downpours out in the fields, and is apparently made of sterner stuff than I am,” Lex put out there, more than done with this line of questioning.

“And why didn’t you both just wait in the car while you called for a taxi or something?” Chloe said suspiciously, eyes narrowed.

“Because the normal cell towers were down; I almost didn’t get through to the mansion staff on the emergency tower setup with the backup generator there,” Lex told her. “No-one was going to be able to make it to the car in less than the half-hour it would and did take to walk here,” he said, beginning to twist the truth until it screamed, “and I _insisted_ that the two of us get moving instead of staying with the car because I was worried that it might turn into tornado weather!” Lex all but snarled out at her, then he breathed in slowly and reached for patience. “--Look, that’s not the point, here.”

“No,” Chloe said, like she was gearing up for something. “ _The point_ is that my dad didn’t know where you were, and couldn’t contact you when he _needed_ to--”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lex objected, because that didn’t make any sense at all, _couldn’t_ be right. “When I called in sick, I _gave_ the main branch the house number here to pass along to him, just in case something-- came… up...” He stopped, stunned.

 _Oh god._ He suddenly remembered his earlier line of reasoning for why he’d wanted to call the plant’s nighttime number, instead of the main office -- he hadn’t wanted Lionel to find out that he was taking a sick day, because...

“Lex?” Clark asked him.

...he’d thought his father would give him a ration of shit for taking a sick day off. But it had never occurred to him -- he’d never have thought that Lionel might have _fired_ anyone over this. He’d legitimately been sick. And _of course_ his father hadn’t let the main branch pass along the number to anyone at Plant No. 3. He would’ve wanted Lex kept out of the loop for whatever he’d wanted to have done.

“Lex.”

He looked up at Clark.

“I should’ve asked you for Gabe’s home phone number,” he said quietly, because -- god -- whatever _was_ going on really _was_ all his fault, wasn’t it? All because he couldn’t remember a simple fucking phone number, and because he’d thought it would be _better_ not to wake Mr. Sullivan up at a god-awful hour of the night. --Except it would have been, wouldn’t it? What was a little bit of simple common courtesy worth, anyway, if violating it would have kept Lex’s sick day under the radar and let Gabe keep his job. In the face of that... when weighed against _that_ …

“Lex?” he heard Lana ask.

“I-- I shouldn’t have called the main office,” he said, feeling strained. He sat down hard on the couch, horrified, dropped his head into his hands, because _of course_ Lionel wouldn’t believe that he’d gotten sick -- _Lex himself_ had hardly believed it, and he’d been the one sick! -- so _of course_ his father had taken it out on the plant manager who he’d thought had been gullible enough to believe it. Of course he had. “I-- I could have waited until the morning and called Gabe _then_ ,” he said, hindsight being 20-20. He felt worse with each passing second.

“Lex,” he heard Mrs. Kent tell him, “it isn’t your fault.”

But Lex just shook his head, staring down at his lap, not seeing anything, really. Because it _was_ his fault. “I should have-- I should have known better.”

“Lex, you couldn’t have--” she stopped, hesitated, then started again. “You weren’t _thinking clearly_ ,” Mrs. Kent told him. “You had a fever of 105. You were _sick_.”

“ _I should have known better._ ” He dropped his hands, straightened slightly; his fists tightened in his lap. He felt ill all over again. Like he needed to throw up.

“Lex…” Clark sat down in front of him. “Lex, it’s gonna be okay…”

“No. No, it’s not,” Lex told him. “I--” He didn’t know what to do. “It’s--” He-- he needed to-- “I-- I can fix this.” He shivered slightly. “I _can_ fix this. ...Right?” He looked up at Clark. “I can fix this…” he said faintly, almost desperately, pressing his fists into his knees.

“You’re shaking,” he heard Lana say, as Clark wrapped his hands around Lex’s own. But he barely heard her; it hardly registered.

“I can-- I can--” He wasn’t sure _what_ he could do. “Maybe--” if he apologized to Lionel for taking the day off, he might…? His mind raced. “I could...” --No, that wouldn’t work, if he acted like he hadn’t needed the day, Gabe would end up taking the brunt of it; at the end of the day he’d still stay fired, as an object lesson for Lex that there would be consequences for his actions. That was _absolutely_ something Lionel would do. And if Lex really had been fired… no, Lionel wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t let Lex off the hook like that -- he wanted Lex at the plant, irregardless of what Lex himself wanted. But even if Lex wasn’t going to be fired... if he tried to hire Gabe back, Lionel would just overrule him and fire Mr. Sullivan again. Lex couldn’t _keep_ Gabe hired, if that wasn’t what Lionel wanted to have happen; Lionel wouldn’t let him. No, the only way he would be able to salvage anything out of this would be if he could convince Lionel that...

Lex looked up at Clark. “I need to you draw up an ice bath,” he told his friend, removing his hands from Clark’s loose hold.

“What?” Clark said, looking confused and alarmed.

“--No, absolutely not,” said Clark’s mother.

“Yes,” Lex said, twisting in place to look up at her. “If I can chill myself now, as badly as I did in that storm, I can probably get my fever back again before I finish fighting whatever this is off.” He was almost over it, but he wasn’t _completely_ over this yet. He still had a chance, but only if he moved quickly.

“Lex--”

“Chloe’s right,” Lex admitted, steeling himself, as he pushed himself to his feet. “I barely believed it myself when I came down with this… whatever-I-have,” he waved at himself. “He won’t believe I’ve been sick, either -- not unless he sees it, and--”

“You are sick!” Clark told him. “He could see you now!”

“Clark, I’m not sick enough anymore for me to be able to justify my having taken the day off,” he told his friend. After all, his father would hardly give him a pass for having coming down with the sniffles. Lex turned towards the kitchen. “Where did you get the ice from earlier?” he asked, starting to move away. Was the freezer working again, and the power back on? Or had they gotten it from the store and stored it in a cooler--

He fell back to the couch, as Clark grabbed him by the arm and tugged him downward.

Lex hit the cushion with his knees oddly, but he did land without injuring himself. He turned back toward Clark, frowning.

“Lex, _you are not making yourself sick again,_ ” his best friend told him adamantly.

Lex stared at him. “But--”

“ **NO** ,” said Clark, and he looked deathly serious. And maybe a little pissed off.

 _And_ he was still holding onto his wrist, which likely meant that Lex wasn’t going anywhere until he managed to convince his friend otherwise.

“Lex?” he heard from over by the door, and he turned his head to see Gabe and Jonathan walk in the open door, unannounced.

“Gabe.” Lex started to stand up, then stopped when he realized that his Clark-tether wasn’t letting go of him and sat down again. “If you need any help--” he began, though what he really wanted to ask was _tell me what I have to do_.

But Gabe just waved him off.

“Dad--” Chloe began.

“Chloe, I hope you haven’t been bothering Mr. Luthor about anything,” Gabe began.

Chloe opened her mouth, and then her face fell.

“ _Chloe_ ,” Gabe sighed in consternation, as he raised a hand to cup the top of her head.

“But… he…” She looked utterly disconsolate. And then she practically threw herself into her father’s arms as they all looked on.

Lex looked away, feeling uncomfortable.

Gabe hugged his daughter back, and stroked her hair a bit, and was saying something to her, though Lex couldn’t hear him from where he was sitting. But after awhile, he slowly disengaged from her, and Lana came over to hug her instead.

Gabe walked over and around, to come sit down on the coffee table in front of him. Lex couldn’t help but feel a little nervous about it. And Clark letting go of him once Gabe was in range didn’t exactly make him feel any less trapped.

“Lex,” Gabe said, as he pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket, “It isn’t your fault.” He handed the pink slip over to him.

“But--” He felt a shock run through him as he scanned the form. This was Gabe’s own dismissal form! He’d actually been fired over this! --How was this not Lex’s fault?

“Look at it.” Gabe tapped a finger against the date line. “These were made up weeks ago. See the printing date? The only thing that was handwritten on this form was…”

“...the date of termination.” And if Lex hadn’t felt sick to his stomach _before_...

“Lionel was just waiting for an excuse to do this,” Gabe told him. “If it wasn’t your sick day, it just would’ve been something else. And you were sick.”

“If I’d known...” Lex trailed off.

Gabe gave him an odd look. “Jonathan didn’t tell you?”

 _Jonathan?_ Lex felt a spike of anger run through him, and he whipped his head around to glare at Clark’s father. He opened his mouth to say, he wasn’t even sure what--

\--and felt a hand settle softly on his shoulder. “Lex, that’s not--”

Lex snapped his jaw shut, thinned his lips, then turned back to Gabe as he removed his hand. Because he was being stupid -- why would he try to get anything out of a man who’d already refused to pass along basic information, when he could just ask Gabe in the first place? Lex looked at his plant manager intently. “ _Tell me what?_ ”

“I called the house and we talked,” Gabe began, tilting his head slightly to frown over at Jonathan, before looking back at Lex. “I told him to tell you not to come in.”

“What?” he heard Chloe protest in disbelief, as he felt his mouth drop open.

He shook himself. “Why the hell not?” He shot another glare over his shoulder at Clark’s father -- when had this call even happened?

Gabe sighed. “When I couldn’t get you on your cellphone, and your father started raising holy hell at the plant, I managed to slip away for a moment and call in a favor or two from a few people I know at the main office, to try and figure out what in the world was going on.” He glanced over Chloe for a moment, before looking back at him. “After I heard the playback of the recording of your message from last night for me, I hung up and called here.” He looked over at Jonathan, not seeming very happy with the man.

“I was holding off on telling him until later for a reason,” Mr. Kent said unapologetically, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. “You were asleep at the time,” he told Lex, “And he still wasn’t thinking clearly,” he continued on to Gabe. “You were the one who said that the last thing anyone needed would be him haring off to the plant to try and get involved.”

“I could have done something!” Lex told him.

“No, you couldn’t,” Gabe told him, and Lex felt another spike of anger shoot through him, this time for a very different reason.

For being underestimated.

“This,” he waved Gabe’s termination notice at him, “is dated _tomorrow_ ,” he told Gabe grimly. “Not today.” If Gabe didn’t think that twenty-four hours was enough time for Lex to beg, borrow, bribe, or otherwise do whatever it took to change Lionel’s mind and make sure that that order got rescinded before the next day came around…

...Then his plant manager _clearly_ didn’t have enough faith in him. And didn’t know how his father liked to play the game.

Not that this was going to be easy. Lex didn’t want to think about what concessions his father might wring out of him -- was _going_ to wring out of him, he well and truly had Lex backed into a corner on this one -- in order to overturn this.

“Don’t worry about this,” Lex told Gabe with a slightly-pained smile, as he folded the dismissal notice in half, and reached down to shove it into a back pocket. “I have an _entire day_ to--” He stopped as Gabe reached out and captured his wrist, frowned when Gabe shook his head at him.

Gabe looked tired. “Lex, that’s dated for tomorrow because not everyone was at the plant today to get served notice. I’m still making the rounds.”

“ _The rounds?_ ” Lex looked at him in horror. “How many people--” He stopped, and felt an icy chill go down his spine. “No.”

“Lex,” Gabe sighed.

“No,” Lex repeated, stunned. He tugged his wrist loose, leaning back in reflexive denial. “No, he promised--” _You only get to defy me once._ That counted, didn’t it? That was a promise. “He can’t--”

“It’s not your fault, Lex,” Gabe told him gently. “You were the one who found a way around needing those layoffs.”

But it didn’t matter. Lex felt like throwing up. He’d only saved those jobs for, what, a handful of months? And what good had it done, in the long run?

 _This isn’t fair,_ he thought. And on top of it all, his father was firing Gabe, and having him fire everyone else first? “He’s not-- He can’t make you do-- this...” He stared as Gabe pulled out another form.

He took it from Gabe, and then numbly handed Gabe’s own notice back over to him.

He unfolded what Gabe had given him, and read it.

Lex was quiet for a long time.

“...Lex?” Clark leaned forward, was frowning over his shoulder, and he knew when Clark had finished getting a good look at it when he heard the sucked-in breath Clark took.

“...I don’t understand,” Lex heard himself say, as he stared down at a termination notice with his name on it, effectively immediately, dated that day.

“He fired you as of this morning. Today,” Gabe told him, as if it wasn’t already spelled out in black and white in front of his eyes on the piece of paper in front of him. “Even if you’d been there, all you could have done was follow him around the plant as he fired everyone in sight.”

“...What?” he croaked out, over the gasp he heard from the girls.

Gabe sighed, suddenly looking even more tired. “He was firing people indiscriminately,” Gabe told him. “He had at least three of the higher-ups and seven secretaries following him around with large binders of those slips, pulling out names as he pointed people out.” He shook his head. “I don’t doubt that he had one for every single employee we had assigned to the plant.”

Lex could only sit there and stare at him, numb.

“After he finally realized that you weren’t coming, he got a little frustrated and left,” Gabe told him. “He was expecting an audience: you. If you hadn’t stayed away, he might’ve ended up canning at least another 20% of the workforce once you’d arrived, or maybe even closing down the plant entirely. As it is, the plant’s back down to the original employee count, to what it was just before I was transferred in last year.” He gave Lex a significant look.

Lex swallowed, hard. They’d needed those new workers for a reason; there was no way that they’d ever be able to make quota with the number of workers they’d had. And if Lionel had rolled back the employee numbers, he was likely rolling back all the administrative changes he and Gabe had made, too. All the progress that they’d made in the last six months...

“I’m sorry,” was all Lex could think to say to him.

“Lex…” Gabe sighed, then he leaned forward, squared his shoulders, and met his eyes, like he always did when he was about to set everything else aside and level with him.

Lex waited, unsure of whether he wanted to hear what the man was going to say.

“Take this,” Gabe said, flicking the top of Lex’s termination notice with a finger, “And get the hell out of this town. Go back to college, and don’t look back. Understand?”

Lex stared at him. “But the plant…”

“Forget about the plant,” he was told.

“Gabe--” he protested.

And in the space of five seconds, Gabe looked like he’d suddenly aged ten years. “Lex,” he said softly, in a voice that was almost gentle, “You didn’t really think that he was going to let you turn the plant around, did you?”

Lex frowned. Because of course he did. Why wouldn’t he? That was what his father had told him, why his father had sent him to Smallville in the first place, wasn’t it? To turn the plant around? Make it viable again?

...But then why had his father fired him? And _Gabe?_ That made even less sense to him. Because how was the plant supposed to function without Mr. Sullivan at the helm?

Unless it wasn’t supposed to function at all.

Gabe looked almost sad.

Lex… didn’t know what to think. He looked down at the slip of paper in his hands, one that effectively freed him from any legal responsibility for the day-to-day business of LuthorCorp, or any of its subsidiaries. He wanted to go back to grad school, yes, but… he hadn’t actually considered that a real possibility since Lionel had taken it off the table, all but forced him to drop out and ordered him to take over the plant. Thinking about going back now was like…

Lex shook his head, because he could hardly fathom the idea anymore. And...

“I’m not leaving Smallville,” Lex told him. “I still have business in town.” He grimaced. “Businesses.” The Talon was the least of it. He owned half that business outright. But where Jonathan Kent had turned down his offer of an investment in his family’s farm, others had gotten wind of it, and Lex had found himself all but forced to have to make similar offers to the other farms in the area, in the interest of fairness -- though for significantly more favorable terms and margins for himself than he’d offered the Kents. But instead of the less-favorable terms discouraging them, some of the local farmers had still decided to take him up on it. So he had several small business partners in the area now. A few of them had even gotten together and started floating ideas about creating a co-op, and they’d also been calling on him to help out with that in a semi-official capacity, since he knew how to read lawyer-speak, had already learned how to do it from Gabe in order to be able to get anything significant done at work (...well, before the administrative changes that he’d all but forced into effect at the plant to at least streamline things for the normal workers _there_ , anyway; he’d found the LuthorCorp bureaucracy as a whole to be a horrible mess).

He also had other property that he’d been in the final stages of talks with Lana’s aunt, Nell Potter, over acquiring, that he’d been seriously considering buying from her. And he’d been letting her slowly convince him into investing in a horse and having it stabled at her farm, to get back into riding a bit. He’d been finally settling into town.

Not to mention that Clark was here.

So no, he was not leaving town. Not anytime soon.

“Lex, you should get as far away from here, and your father, as possible,” Gabe told him.

Lex frowned up at him. “...Why?” he had to ask.

Gabe’s face went through a very complicated expression, but in the end, he just shook his head, and didn’t explain.

“Just… take care of yourself, Mr. Luthor,” Gabe told him, as he pushed off of the coffee table. He clapped a hand on his shoulder, then turned and left. And all Lex could do was watch him put an arm around his daughter and go.

“You, too,” Lex said quietly, after he’d left, as he turned back around, looking down at the termination notice he’d been handed. What a thankless last job. Lex blew out a breath and placed it down on the coffee table in front of him.

“Did you need me for something, Lana?” he called out a good bit more loudly, not looking away from the notice. He smoothed it out carefully on the flat wooden surface.

“I…” He practically heard her brace herself, as she underwent the mental transition from ‘high school friend’ to ‘serious small business owner’ behind his back. “No, not really,” she told him. “Chloe said she needed to find you, and that it was important. She didn’t say why.”

...And Lana was oh-so-carefully avoiding having to say what, if anything, she herself had already known without Chloe needing to tell her, and how much. ‘Rumors around town’, indeed. _That_ was going to be fun to have to deal with. Gabe might not blame him, but that didn’t mean that no-one else would.

After all, it _had_ been his fault, even if the other adults were trying to make him feel better about it. Gabe had all-but-confirmed it. Lionel had been looking for a reason to do what he’d wanted, and Lex had given him the perfect excuse; he’d just about handed it over gift-wrapped for him to use.

“ _Are_ you leaving town?” Lana asked him.

Lex let out a small laugh. “I haven’t changed my mind in the last three minutes, Lana,” he told her over his shoulder. It surprised him that he could feel amused by this -- by anything at all at this point, really. Because somehow, he didn’t feel he had a right to. Not after this.

“Okay,” he heard her say. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“If he’s feeling better,” Mrs. Kent interjected, before Lex could respond.

He looked over his shoulder at her, then gave Lana a half-smile.

“If I’m feeling better,” he repeated dutifully.

“Good,” he heard Clark mutter under his breath. Lex rubbed a hand across his forehead, and found himself having to choke down a laugh.

Clark got up from the couch, and he heard Lana say her goodbyes to both Clark and his parents, and then the front door closed behind her.

Lex took a slow breath in, and slowly let it out. He took a slow breath in again.

Then he pushed himself to his feet, turning away from Lionel’s latest insult, and asked, “Is there any more of that vegetable soup left?”

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
